“Allowing Rabat to assume the presidency of the UN Human Rights Council is like putting a wolf to guard the sheep.”. So say more than thirty Sahrawi human rights organizations, which have launched a campaign to block the appointment of the Alawite dictatorship as head of the UN Human Rights Council next year, which has already received the approval of the League of Arab States.

“Morocco should not preside over the UN Human Rights Council while it occupies Western Sahara,” the main Sahrawi human rights organizations, which work in exile or in the occupied territories against abuses of the law by Moroccan authorities, said in a joint statement.

In September, Morocco’s candidacy received explicit support from the Cairo-based Arab League. “In light of Morocco’s ongoing campaign to assume the annual presidency of the UN Human Rights Council, which oversees thousands of human rights complaints from around the world, civil society in Western Sahara is calling on the Council to reject Rabat’s candidacy, citing the occupation and colonization of its homeland. lack of cooperation with UN mechanisms, as well as their attacks and harassment of human rights defenders, journalists and others for cooperating with the UN,” they claim.

Organizations that signed the agreement, including associations for the defense of Sahrawi prisoners in Moroccan prisons and organizations seeking to break the information blockade of the occupied territories, believe that “Morocco does not protect or respect the human rights standards required for members of a human rights organization.” Council”, of which he has been a member since 2022.

Increased repression

Since becoming a member of the organization, “Morocco has intensified its persecution of journalists and critics and continues to detain and subject journalists, bloggers and human rights defenders to unfair trials.” “Press freedom is dying a slow and deliberate death in the country, as evidenced by the persecution and imprisonment of journalists and described in the Human Rights Watch report. “They’ll Get You No Matter What: Morocco’s Strategy to Silence Dissent””

The persecution, to which is added the tragedy of the jump. wing of the Melilla Valley in June 2022, with at least 37 migrants killed and dozens still missing today. The statement recalls the use of migration as a weapon of pressure on Spain, a strategy censored by the European Parliament. “The humanitarian and human rights crisis is even worse in parts of Western Sahara that have remained under Moroccan occupation since 1975. To this day, Morocco continues to deny the people of Western Sahara their right to self-determination, the premise and basis on which all other human rights lie, in open defiance of UN Security Council resolutions that have called for a referendum for the people of Western Sahara since the early 1990s.” , the note says.

“Moroccan authorities continue to target activists supporting Sahrawi self-determination, preventing meetings and disrupting the work of local non-governmental human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, 2023), with the territory a virtual “information black hole” (Reporters Without Borders.) Over the past eight years Access to Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights The situation is exacerbated by the systematic expulsion of international monitors and denial of access to international organizations, turning the occupation into a military human rights black hole,” they add.

“A state that tries to obstruct dialogue with the UN, refuses to implement and follow the recommendations of UN bodies and even publicly attacks UN experts, while punishing human rights defenders, cannot be allowed to have a human rights defender for his participation in the Human Rights Council, to act as its president. This would destroy the very legitimacy on which the survival of the Human Rights Council depends, while at the same time abandoning a people that has been under occupation since 1975,” explains Sahrawi civil society.