Category Archives: Oil and gas exploration

Article: “King of Morocco’s new energy ploy amounts to greenwashing thuggery”

Below explores King Mohammed VI’s insistent attempts to legalise exports of Western Saharan fish supplies, as well as allow for oil and gas exploration projects in the occupied territory.

“This king assumes eventually, everyone will forget about the sovereign rights of the victims of thuggery. That should never be allowed to happen.”

By David Keene.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/27/king-of-moroccos-new-energy-ploy-amounts-to-greenw/

BREAKING: Court annuls EU fisheries and trade deals in occupied Western Sahara!

29 September 2021

Polisario’s representative to Europe, Oubi Bachir, with Manuel Devers from Polisario’s legal team

Today, the EU Court of Justice has struck a blow to the EU’s practice of applying trade and fisheries agreements with Morocco to occupied Western Sahara.

The press release from the Court today specifically states that Polisario is able to represent the Saharawi people before European courts.

The right of the Saharawi people to consent has not been respected, the court stated. It states that the Union could not have replaced the “consent” of the Saharawi people with the argument of “benefits”.

Read more.…

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

Can the EU answer these questions on Western Sahara trade talks?

Western Sahara Resource Watch

30 May 2017


Above: The tank vessel Key Bay seen in the harbor of El Aaiun on 6 January 2017 – the first confirmed transport of goods from Western Sahara into the EU after the landmark judgment of the CJEU.

On 21 December 2016, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) judged that EU-Morocco trade deals cannot include the territory of Western Sahara.

Yet, the EU Commission has been pushing hard the EU member states to ignore that judgement. And in spite of vocal opposition from the UN-recognised representative of the people of Western Sahara – the Polisario Front – this morning, EU member states gave their green light to the Commission to start talks with Morocco for Western Sahara trade. Continue reading →

Natural resources and resistance in Western Sahara

Democracy in Action

Joanna Allen

22 May 2017

The Sahara, 

my brothers and sisters,

is not for sale.

The green of my land,

makes me proud,

as the beauty of its pastures,

in the eyes of the good shepherd.

The phosphates you desire,

they will cause you harm,

not even if they were for sale, 

will you be able to buy them.

So go the first lines of a poem by Fatma Brahim, who composed the work in 1976 as she and her daughters left the destroyed refugee camp of Um Dreiga, Western Sahara, after the Moroccan air force napalmed it. The poem, titled “Sahara is not for sale,” has become a classic revolutionary song for Saharawis, who are still pursuing their struggle for independence. It succinctly draws attention to a central aspect of the Western Sahara conflict, and an increasingly key demand made by Saharawi pro-independence activists: natural resources.

Continue reading →

A wave of divestments over illegal resource exploitation in Western Sahara

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 >>

World’s largest wealth fund drops Cairn and Kosmos over Western Sahara

tn_cairn_609Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW)  28 June 2016

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has announced it has excluded Kosmos Energy and Cairn Energy from its portfolios because of their oil search in Western Sahara. Approx. 54 million dollars of shares were sold.
“The Council recommends the exclusion (of Cairn and Kosmos)… due to an unacceptable risk of the companies contributing to serious violations of fundamental ethical norms through their hydrocarbon exploration offshore Western Sahara,” the council said.

Read more  >>

Louise Gronkjaer reports on a bizarre conference staged by the king of Morocco as a PR exercise

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


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 >>

Western Sahara republic declares its exact Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)

sadr_eez_610WSRW, Western Sahara Resource Watch, 6 March 2016

Upon the visit of the UN Secretary-General to the Saharawi refugee camps yesterday, the SADR Government deposited with Ban Ki-Moon – as the depositary of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea – the coordinates and charts of its exact EEZ claims.
“The coordinates and charts showing the EEZ outer limits will now be communicated to all UN member states trough their Permanent Missions in New York”, stated Frente Polisario in a press release.

WSRW report >>