He mentioned in this regard Morocco as an example in this area, based on the history of the Kingdom rich with this type of event, especially since the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, during which Morocco showed great capacity for peaceful negotiation to resolve conflicts at the time.
headquarters of the Centre for Peace Studies (University of Sydney)
The conference was titled "negotiation, an instrument for peace and conflict resolution: Morocco as an example", was organized as part of the Centre for Peace Studies and Conflict at the Sidney Australian University.
The ambassador began his lecture by a fundamental question about the method used by sovereign states, to resolve conflicts that arose before the 20th century and before the international conventions to resolve international conflicts, stopping at Article 6 of the UN Charter, entitled: "Resolving conflicts peacefully."
The ambassador said that Morocco which has remained an independent state for over 12 centuries, played a very active role in the contemporary history of Nations and has a long history in the field of alliances and competitive struggles with the modern European powers, because of its strategic position.
Thus, until the late 19th century and facing the competition between European states, Sultan Moulay Hassan 1st (1873-1894) practiced "a strategy to avoid direct military friction with France along the Algerian border and with Spain on the borders with the two occupied cities of Ceuta and Melilla, seeking diplomatic solutions as the only method to resolve conflicts ".
The result of this strategy was that the international powers signed agreements with Morocco respecting its sovereignty. Mr. Maouelainin estimated that this took place with the realization that the royal regime kept territorial unity through allegiance (Baiaa) made by sheikhs (leaders) of tribes to the Sultan.
These tribes "enjoy in the framework of this system wide powers in terms of the autonomy of territories that constituted indivisible parts of the Moroccan nation."
With the growing colonial ambitions of France and Spain in the early 20th century and despite the imposition of double protectorate in 1912, "recognizing the authority of the Moroccan political system of any internal action" and recognizing that Morocco is a sovereign state that "negotiates all agreements and conventions relating to its independence and territorial unity", has been maintained.
At this conference, Moroccan Ambassador spoke about the history of resistance to French and Spanish protectorate, highlighting armed nature of this resistance and the manner through which Morocco obtained its independence through difficult negotiations, but peaceful, concerning six parts of its territory via several steps:
- First peaceful negotiation and signing of the Declaration of Independence November 18, 1956
- Second peaceful negotiation with Spain to recover the provinces under its protectorate in northern Morocco, April 1956
- Third peaceful negotiations in October 1956 about the city of Tangier, which was under the protection of 13 States
- Fourth peaceful negotiation on the entire Sahara region of which and Spain delivered the northern part, that is to say the region of Tarfaya in 1958
Morocco continued its peaceful negotiations in 1962 before the United Nations and the Decolonization Committee, as the only party claiming recovery of the Sahara, inviting Spain to peaceful negotiations on the remaining Saharawi territories and city of Sidi Ifni. A UN resolution published in 1965, in which the Committee of decolonization required Spain to implement the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial territories and peoples.
The fifth stage of peaceful negotiation concerned Sidi Ifni, since a UN resolution issued in December 1966 required Spain to accelerate the decolonization of this city. The following year, the Franco government began negotiations with Morocco, which resulted in the recovery of this city in 1969.
However, Mr. Maouelainin says that Spain tried to "extend the colonial period by dividing the case into two, Western Sahara on one side and the Sidi Ifni on the other side".
After the founding of Polisario in the context of the Cold War, the new political data at the time, influenced the UN mechanisms, said the Moroccan ambassador, as a consequence "files are no longer treated on the basis of historical legitimacy, but on the basis of belonging to both east and west camps ".
Morocco has, however, continued the process of peaceful negotiation with Spain by submitting the Sahara file to the UN International Courts of Justice, which confirmed in October 1974, the legal ties Baiaa) between tribes of the Sahara and the Kings of Morocco. This is the legal opinion on which the deceased King Hassan II to relied to liberate the Sahara peacefully through the popular Green March.
The ambassador stopped at the sixth negotiation with Spain, which intervened at the request of the Security Council and which was followed by recovery of the Sahara by Morocco, citing the obvious influence of the Cold War on the Sahara.
Algeria, which belonged to the Eastern camp supported the separatist Polisario Front. "A case of decolonization between Morocco and Spain turned into armed conflict with separatists supported internationally by the eastern neighbor."
At the Summit of the Organization of African Unity in 1981, and its recognition in 1984 as an entity on the territory subject to the conflict without referendum, until submitting the case to the UN in 1985, through the settlement process in the Sahara by UN envoys and their failure in resolving the conflict, the Moroccan ambassador stopped on the important developments that took place in 2007, when Morocco with its solid inspiration record of peaceful conflict resolution, autonomy described by UN reports as serious and realistic welcomed by international community hoping it will shake the status quo which lasted from 1996 to 2006, and end a conflict that has lasted more than three decades.
History of Morocco’s decolonization
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