Speaking at the conference, held on the sideline of the 14th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Austrian human rights activist Franz Mekyna underlined that children in the camps are subject to an inhuman treatment and are denied their basic rights including the right to education.

    She descried the Tindouf camps as closed prisons, stressing the need to open borders for the forcibly detained population in the camps.

    Touching on the humanitarian aid embezzlement by the Polisario, Mekyna said that this aid has no effect on the ground.

    Morocco’s initiative to grant a large autonomy to its southern provinces, the Sahara, is positive and fair, as it aims to find a lasting settlement to this regional conflict, She added, calling on the international community to act in this direction.

    For her part, representative of the Moroccan NGO “Bayt Al Hikma” Khadija Rouissi voiced concern about the situation of women in the camps, noting that the Algeria-backed Polisario follows, since years, a reproduction policy which forces women to increase population growth in the camps.   

      Rouissi recalled that these blatant violations of women rights have been recounted by Sahraoui women who fled the camps and joined Morocco and were also decried by international rights watchdogs, such as the Human Rights Watch.

       In this respect, she called on the international community to put pressure on Algeria and the Polisario in order to enable NGOs get access to the camps where human rights violations take place on a daily basis.

     Member of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS) Moulay Ahmed Mghizlat contrasted the suffering inflicted on women in the polisario-run camps with the achievements of their sisters in the Kingdom’s southern provinces at the political, economic and social levels.

    He said the autonomy plan will put an end to the suffering of the women held against their will in the camps.      

    The conference, moderated by former Polisario representative to Italy Sidati El Ghallaoui, was organized by the Agency for International Development and the Moroccan NGO Women’s Action Union (UAF).

Source: MAP
News and events concerning Western Sahara issue/ Corcas