A new HCR-led family visit exchange was organized on Friday by the UN mission in the Sahara (MINURSO) between family members living in Morocco's Southern Provinces, The Sahara, and their relatives in the Polisario-run Tindouf camps, south-western Algeria.

 Thirty-four people from eight families from the southern province of Dakhla flew to the Tindouf camps in the morning, while thirty-three members of nine families traveled from these camps to Dakhla, in the 4th visit exchange since the beginning of 2008, a press release of the Moroccan Office of Coordination with MINURSO said.

    Since their launch on March 5, 2004, the Sahrawi family visits exchange benefited some 5,197 people, 2,728 of whom live in the Tindouf Camps.

    Polisario is a separatist movement that lays claims to Morocco's Southern Provinces, known as The Sahara, a territory, which Morocco had retrieved from Spanish rule under the Madrid Accord, signed in 1975 with Spain and Mauritania. A year later, Polisario lured thousands of Moroccan Sahrawis into joining it in the Tindouf camps where they have been held ever since.