Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW), 27 June 2016

In recent months, several investment firms have relinquished their interests in companies that are involved in the natural resource exploitation of occupied Western Sahara.
Ever more investors are leaving the small handful of the companies that take part in the exploration, exploitation and purchase of non-renewable resources. Details of 21 such companies are provided in this article.

WSRW article >>

Welcome to Dakhla – the pearl of the southern region of Morocco
Philippe Maton/Flickr

April 2015 – On Business Class to an Occupied City in the Desert

Louise Gronkjaer writes “A brand new conference hall in the middle of the desert. Hundreds of security guards to patrol every sand dune. And absolutely no good reasons to justify that the Moroccan king has spent thousands to fly me in. So why am I in Dakhla? …(cont.)”

Report on Dakhla conference >>

Jan 21, 2016, Menas Associates, Sahara

A landmark ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in favour of the Polisario Front on 10 December has ordered the annulment of a trade agreement between Morocco and the European Union (EU) because it includes the territory of Western Sahara.
The March 2012 trade agreement, which failed to explicitly refer to Western Sahara, left open the possibility that the accord would apply in the disputed region, as both Morocco and the EU clearly intended.

Read more >>

13 November 2015
La Trobe Law School announces the publication of the latest issue of

Global Change, Peace & Security, Special Issue: Western Sahara: The Role of Resources in its Continuing Occupation (Issue 27(3), October 2015).

To read about the right to self-determination, political and socio-economic factors that may inhibit its exercise, and the possible consequences of failure to give effect to that right in the context of the Saharawis of Western Sahara and Morocco’s exploitation of Saharawi natural resources, see this latest issue.
The journal is published by Routledge in association with La Trobe Law School.

Global Change, Peace & Security – Special issue: Contents

Australia Western Sahara Association – Press Release, 25 March 2015

Following the inaugural International conference on the illegal exploitation of Western Sahara resources held in Melbourne on 20 March, the Australia Western Sahara Association called on the Federal Government to prohibit Australian company trade in Western Saharan resources from the occupied territory and to push the UN to force a breakthrough in the 40 year stalemate of Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.

Professor Stephen Zunes states that “International law makes it clear that Morocco has no entitlement to control and exploit Western Sahara’s natural resources (…cont. )”

Continue reading →

Western Sahara Research Watch (WSRW)
9 March 2015
In celebration of International Women’s Day, yesterday 8 March 2014, the women of the Saharawi refugee camps held a protest against foreign companies that are complicit in Morocco’s plunder of their occupied homeland: Western Sahara.
In Boujdour camp, one of the Saharawi refugee camps in the south-western Algerian desert, women yesterday gathered to demand an end to the illegal exploitation of their homeland, urging the involved foreign companies to leave the territory.

Read more >>

Kamal Fadel
20 March 2015, The Age, BusinessDay

An international conference was held in Melbourne on Friday March 19 to explore the fraught history of Western Sahara – Africa’s last colony – and Australian companies’ role in supporting a regime that disallows the local people, the Saharawis, the same rights to their environment Australians not only take for granted, but which built this country.

Article >>