UN Decolonization Committee: Algeria Exposes the Nonsense of Moroccan Colonialism

The Permanent Representative of Algeria to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Ammar Benajama, supports the right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination and independence, by organizing a free referendum in line with the provisions of Resolution 1514 and implementation of the mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara.

During his address before the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, on Tuesday, Ambassador Bendjama mentioned the legal status of Western Sahara, which the United Nations considers to be among the lands under colonialism, wondering at the same time, “How does the Kingdom of Morocco claim its sovereignty over the Sahrawi lands, when it is the one that proposed to Mauritania to share them with it in 1975, a fact preserved in the United Nations archives.”

The representative of Algeria also mentioned the statement of the late King of Morocco, Hassan II, in which he affirmed his country’s commitment to the results of the referendum that MINURSO’s mission was tasked to organize after conducting a census of the population of Western Sahara, a task that – as he said – “the United Nations body has not been able to implement until today due to the obstacles which the Kingdom of Morocco did not stop putting before the various prominent figures assigned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to realize this work.”

Nevertheless, Ambassador Bendjama wondered about the intransigence of the Kingdom of Morocco and its complete refusal to organize a referendum for the people of Western Sahara, “although it falsely praises economic and social progress within the occupied territories.”

After his speech, Ambassador Bendjama stressed that Algeria “is not a party to the conflict and that it has no expansionist ambitions and that its only goal of which it is proud is to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and gain their independence, and that it will continue to stand by them as it did with the rest of the peoples who were under colonialism in the world.”

While exercising his right to respond to “the usual nonsense of the representative of Morocco,” Ambassador Bendjama confirmed two points, the first is that the referendum “although it is considered a technical means of self-determination, has an important political dimension and is considered the only means for the people of Western Sahara to exercise their right to self-determination, which is a right that will neither be affected by the opening of consulates in the occupied territories nor by announcements issued from distant countries.”

As for the second point, which is related to the round tables in which Morocco is trying to involve Algeria, the Algerian representative explained that “the problem lies in Morocco’s insistence on discussing its imaginary solution of self-rule as the only solution for negotiation and refuses to talk about self-determination or the human rights situation in the occupied territories or its illegal exploitation of natural resources or other topics that the Sahrawi side wants to discuss.”

In response to some of the interveners who referred to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, the representative of Algeria recalled that “there are many international organizations and bodies that operate freely in Tindouf,” noting at the same time that “Morocco has been refusing for more than 8 years to allow officials mandated to the United Nations and our organization’s rapporteurs to enter the occupied territories, and rejects a solution proposed since more than 10 years ago to expand the mandate of MINURSO (the United Nations Mission to organize the referendum in Western Sahara) to include monitoring the human rights situation.”