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Friday, March 29, 2024
Written Press

The concept is an "ideological device" converted into a "real combat weapon within the UN


The inclusion of "Western Sahara" in the list of "Non-Self-Governing Territories" is an aberration, said an important article published by the French information website Médiapart, November 24th, entitled "Tribulations of Non-Self-Governing Territories List".


Analyzing this concept, the author says that the Sahara region is a territory "inhabited by populations that no major difference separates them from historical Morocco, whether by language, religion, traditional allegiances, political identities (Berber-speaking and Arab-speaking tribes spread across the various colonial frontiers), etc. "


He considers that "Western Sahara is the only case included in the NSGTs (outside Europe) where we do not find" European white colonizers "dominating non-European populations: its inclusion is therefore an aberration, not preventing it from continuing to be used in international diplomatic and political disputes ".


The article, which deals with this issue of Non-Self-Governing Territories with great relevance, analyzes the situation from the point of view of law and logic, and notes that this notion of "non-self-governing territories" (NSGTs), which is a UN construction is simply an ideological artifice.


The author finds that this conception is both illogical and arbitrary, which produces on the ground "tangible effects" and strongly influences diplomatic positions while influencing the international politics in front of a real weapon of combat in the UN arena.


NSGTs classification is heterogeneous and "abyss of confusion from the origin", indicates the author stressing the historical evolution of this classification, by quoting specialists, in particular Henri Grimal who said that the 'Factors Committee' has been given the task of determining elements that might be taken into account in deciding when a territory is or is not 'a country whose population has not yet fully reached self government ".


This famous Committee faced the same difficulties as the assembly "to produce the definition of" non-autonomous territory "(Grimal 1985: 147).


It could not be otherwise. The definition and consequently the inclusion or not of a concrete territory in this category have only political basis, that is to say: in terms of will (action based on interest) and power - balance of power between supporters of various attempts to define. Hence the integration of a concrete territory in the "list" elaborated by UN bodies.


It is therefore a simple political construction whose very elastic meaning makes sense only by the political actors within the UN, in this case state powers.


Two criteria ground the absurdity of this construction: it is not homogeneous, because it does not include only cases of the same nature and does not follow at all a uniform criterion, and it is not exhaustive because it does not include not all cases that correspond to its original definition.


Hence the author's concluding observation: "it is a useful ideological instrument in the variable geometry strategies of some countries, not classification obeying logic and not corresponding to seizable empirical realities".


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