Category Archives: Human Rights

Aminatou Haidar announced as a Laureate in the 2019 Rights Livelihood Award

The Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
Press Release, Stockholm, 25 September 2019

The 2019 Award goes to Aminatou Haidar (Western Sahara), Guo Jianmei (China), Greta Thunberg (Sweden) and Davi Kopenawa / Hutukara Yanomami Association (Brazil).
The Laureates were announced in Stockholm, Sweden, on 25 September 2019 at a press conference at the International Press Centre at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Ole von Uexkull, Executive Director of the Right Livelihood Foundation, commented: “With the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, we honour four practical visionaries whose leadership has empowered millions of people to defend their inalienable rights and to strive for a liveable future for all on planet Earth.

Rights Livelihood Award announcement

24/10/19: ACFID Members Support Call for Independence of Western Sahara

Press release: ACFID Members Support Call for Independence of Western Sahara
24 Oct, 2019
Members of the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) have backed a resolution at the Annual General Meeting to support the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence.
ACFID’s members, Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA and ActionAid Australia, put forward the resolution at the AGM which was held during the ACFID National Conference in Sydney and received the support of the ACFID membership.

Press release
Text of resolution

An exiled nation; Saharawi advocates call on the world to support self-determination for Western Sahara

Tecber Ahmed Saleh, a health worker in the Western Sahara Ministry of Health, speaks to an audience of trade unionists at Unions NSW, Sydney, Australia. Photo by Timothy Ginty, used with permission.

Journalist Tim Ginty reports on an exiled nation, Western Sahara in the online publication Global Voices, dated 4 October 2019

“For 40 years, the Saharawi people have been exiled from their homeland, cast out into what is known as the “desert of deserts”, where they live in hope of one day experiencing a long-awaited return to their promised land: their homeland of Western Sahara.

Their wait has been so long that entire generations have lived and died hoping for a return. One young Saharawi woman, Tecber Ahmed Saleh, tells me: “My grandmother, she died holding the radio, thinking that tomorrow they would call a referendum.”

Global Voices article

Africa’s Last Colony; Morocco continues to stonewall…John Bolton unwilling to ignore any longer

Africa’s Last Colony; Morocco continues to stonewall on the human disaster it has created in Western Sahara, and John Bolton is not the only U.S. official unwilling to ignore the problem any longer.
by David Keene
The American Spectator, August 10, 2019

David Keene writes “If Americans knew more about what Jim Baker, John Bolton, and elected officials like Senator Inhofe have learned about the ongoing human disaster in the Western Sahara, all of Rabat’s lobbyists and diplomats would lose their ability to keep the U.S. from stepping up the pressure to force their country to live up to its promises.”  Read more at link below…
http://Africa’s last colony, by David Keene

‘Silence! We are being killed in occupied Western Sahara!’

Al-Saharawi, News Platform and Analysis, 22 July 2019
By Malainin Lakhal
The Moroccan para-military and security forces are involved since last Friday evening in a massive, violent and deadly repression against Saharawi civilians in the occupied city of El Aaiun, the occupied capital of Western Sahara. The events broke after thousands of Saharawis got out to the streets to celebrate the victory of the Algerian Football Team in the Africa Cup of Nations last Friday 19th July. (cont…)

Al-Saharawi article

RSF Report: Western Sahara, A News Blackhole

Reporters without Borders, 11 June 2019
In its report on press freedoms in Western Sahara, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) sheds light on a territory cut off from the rest of the world, a veritable news black hole that has become a no-go zone for journalists.
“Western Sahara, a desert for journalists,” is the first-ever work of research into press freedoms in this non-autonomous territory,

Press release and link to report

Western Sahara comes to Melbourne – Journalism in a no-go area

Melbourne Filmoteca and Australia Western Sahara Association
Press Release 14 June 2019
Ms Nazha Al Khalidi, a Saharawi journalist, and her colleagues in Equipe Media can be seen at work in a documentary, Rifles or Graffiti, being screened on
Tuesday 18 June at 6.30pm at ACMI in the Treasury Theatre, Lower Plaza,  1 Macarthur Place.
Press Release-14june19 Rifles or Graffiti

Ms Nazha Al Khalidi, a Saharawi journalist faces trial on 24 June for her work to expose human rights abuses in Western Sahara when she live-streamed footage of police beating peaceful protesters. Her case is described in detail by a group of Canadian lawyers, in a letter dated 6 June sent to the Moroccan minister of Justice.

Exciting conference takes place in South Africa in solidarity with Saharawi people

Tshwane, South Africa, March 25 and 26, 2019

The conference has been organised by the South African Development Community (SADC) and hosted by South Africa. It has been attended by many heads of states and foreign ministers:
SADC ministers converged on the Department of International Relations in Pretoria on Monday for the first ever Solidarity Conference with the Saharawi people.
This is an unprecedented occasion in that we have no recollection of any intergovernmental body ever hosting a conference of this nature,” Minister Lindiwe Sisulu told a packed conference hall.

Watch the speech from the South Africa’s President Ramaphosa:

SADC throws weight behind Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s bid for Western Sahara

Daily Maverick, 25 March 2019
By Luwellyn Landers

On 25 and 26 March 2019, the Southern African Development Community will convene a Solidarity Conference in the City of Tshwane with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The conference will confirm the region’s support for the decolonisation of the occupied territory and for the holding of a referendum on self-determination for the Saharawi people.

Read Daily Maverick report

Is One of Africa’s Oldest Conflicts Finally Nearing Its End? The New Yorker Dec 2018

Women at a traditional festival at the Boujdour camp near Tindouf, Algeria
Photograph by Nicolas Niarchos

The New Yorker, December 29, 2018
By Nicolas Niarchos
December 29, 2018

John Bolton and a former German President have helped spur the first negotiations over the Western Sahara in six years.
……”Since Bolton’s appointment, in March, there has been a flurry of activity regarding the Western Sahara conflict at the U.N. and in the State Department. “There are two Americans who really focus a lot on the Western Sahara: one’s Jim Baker, the other’s me,” Bolton told me. “I think there should be intense pressure on everybody involved to see if they can’t work it out.” This spring, at the insistence of the U.S. and to the chagrin of Moroccan and French diplomats, the U.N. peacekeeping mandate for the Western Sahara was extended by only six months rather than a year…”

Read complete article