French Position Doesn’t Change the Nature of the Sahrawi Occupied Territory

The Moroccan regime’s efforts to annex the occupied Sahrawi territories lack legal force based on international law, because it (Western Sahara) is a non-self-governing territory, according to international bodies, led by the United Nations, François Dubuisson, a professor at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, said.

François Dubuisson explained in an interview with the French channel “TV5 Monde” that the fact that a region does not enjoy self-government means that it has the right to self-determination, especially since the efforts of the United Nations body ended at the beginning of the nineties of the last century, to push the two conflicting parties, the Moroccan regime and the Polisario Front, to agree on a ceasefire and hold a referendum to decide the fate of the Sahrawi people. Still, the Alawite Kingdom quickly turned its back, abandoning its international obligations.

The professor of international law relied on many approaches, regulations and decisions issued by international bodies and institutions, including the International Court of Justice, which in 1975 issued a decision stating that the Moroccan regime does not have the right to sovereignty over the occupied Sahrawi lands and that the “Green March” lacks legal legitimacy.
The African Court of Human Rights confirmed this decision. Then the European Court of Justice, ruled, as is known, the illegality of concluding an agricultural agreement between the Moroccan regime and the European Union because it includes Sahrawi lands, over which the Moroccan regime has no sovereignty, according to the ruling of the European Court of Justice.

It is known that the European countries had refused to renew this agreement (fishing in Sahrawi waters) after its expiration on July 17 of last year, due to their certainty that the European Court of Justice would reject the appeal submitted by the Moroccan regime and the European Union, in the decision that will be issued before the end of the current year. This, according to legal experts, will be in line with the petition of the Public Prosecutor of this court last March, who had asked the court to uphold the initial ruling to be final and decisive, which was in the interest of the Sahrawi people and the Polisario Front, as he denied the existence of any form of sovereignty of the Alawite regime in Rabat over the territory of Western Sahara.

François Dubusison attacked the recent French move, which offered Western Sahara to the Moroccan regime on a platter. The French decision excluded any solutions to the Sahrawi issue outside the autonomy plan presented by the Alawite Kingdom in 2007, in contrast to the Spanish position, which was cautious enough, given that it established the autonomy plan as one of the solutions to resolve the conflict in Western Sahara, and not the only solution, as Paris said.

The reading of the professor of international law coincides with the statement of the Algerian Foreign Ministry, which criticized the French decision and described it as “the result of suspicious political calculations, immoral assumptions, and legal readings that are not based on any sound foundations that support or justify them,” in addition to the fact that it “does not help provide the conditions necessary for a peaceful settlement of the Western Sahara issue, and distorting, falsifying and forging the facts by supporting a colonial reality and providing unjustified support for Morocco’s alleged and imaginary sovereignty over the territory of Western Sahara.”

Observers believe that the controversial French decision came in anticipation of the European Court of Justice, which is expected to issue its decision regarding the alleged sovereignty of the Moroccan regime over the occupied Sahrawi lands, which is likely to be to the disadvantage of the Alawite regime in Rabat, which is trying to play the political card to confuse the justicial decision, which will strike Rabat’s claims regarding the legality of its control over the capabilities and wealth of the Sahrawi people.