Category Archives: Phosphate importation

ACTU resolution on Western Sahara adopted on 28/5/2015

At the ACTU Congress today, 28 May, a resolution was passed on Western Sahara

The Australian Council of Trade Unions notes that
•             Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975
•             UN efforts to accomplish the decolonisation process in Western Sahara have not been successful;
•             Around 165,000 Saharawis continue to live in dire conditions in refugee camps in South West of Algeria;
•             Saharawis in the occupied areas endure human rights abuses and denial of their basic rights;
•             The only just, legal and lasting solution to the conflict in Western Sahara, is to end the Moroccan illegal occupation and allow the Sahara people to exercise their right to self-determination, in accordance with the UN decolonisation doctrine;
Congress:
•             Strongly supports the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence;
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10 April 2015: United Nations Secretary-General’s Report on Western Sahara

10 April, United Nations, Security Council
This latest UN Secretary-General report on the situation concerning Western Sahara is a disappointing indicator of the UN’s current position on Western Sahara.
In many respects it simply reaffirms the status quo and once again offers little hope that the UN will instigate meaningful change to support the Saharawi’s right to their country and their future. All this in a context of Morocco’s blatant violations of the basic requirements of the international community – self-determination – and of international law – the protection of human rights during an armed occupation.

UN Secretary-General’s 2015 report >>

New Zealand TV: Human rights violation: NZ companies under fire for fertiliser imports

Sunday March 29, 2015 Source: ONE News

A protest in the depths of Africa has drawn attention to two New Zealand fertiliser companies.
Ballance and Ravensdown are being urged to stop importing the main fertiliser ingredient phosphate from Western Sahara because of alleged human rights violations. Forty years ago Morocco invaded Western Sahara and started mining phosphate rock and selling it around the world for millions of dollars.

Video and report >>

AWSA Press Release: Australia urged to make Western Sahara imports illegal

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. )”

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Saharawi women protest plunder on International Women’s Day

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.

Australian fertilisers helping prop up Africa’s last colony

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 >>

Thirty-ninth anniversary of SADR proclamation celebrated in Australia

Saharawi Press Service reports on recent and forthcoming Australian action for Western Sahara, Canberra, March 4, 2015 (SPS)

The thirty-ninth anniversary of the proclamation of the Saharawi Republic (SADR) has been commemorated in several Australian cities.
On the occasion, the Saharawi flag was raised in the cities of Melbourne, Ballart, Geelong and Victoria as a form of solidarity with the Saharawi people.
As well, Melbourne will later this month host an international conference on the Saharawi natural resources.
The conference will be attended by experts, professors, lawyers and representatives of international companies. (SPS)

Article >>
Flag raising pictures >>

The Responsibility of the UN Security Council in the Case of Western Sahara

Hans Corell, Former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations
International Judicial Monitor, International Law Analysis and Commentary, Winter 2015

In this Commentary Hans Corell raises the question of Western Sahara saying “that it is a situation where the Security Council risks falling short in fulfilling its mandate. Under the UN Charter the Council has a legal obligation to take action in situations like the present.” (…continued)

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Luxembourg pension fund blacklists six firms over Saharan imports

Published Western Sahara Resource Watch: 19.11 – 2014

A Luxembourg government fund has excluded six companies from its portfolios due to “association to illegal exploitation of natural resources (Western Sahara)”.
On 15 November 2014, the Fonds de Compensation commun au régime général de pension (FDC), published the list of 61 companies that it has decided to blacklist. No less than six of those companies have been rejected because they purchase phosphate from Moroccan occupied Western Sahara.
Two Australian companies, Incitec Pivot and Wesfarmers, are complicit in this exploitation of Saharawi resources and are included in the FDC blacklist

P for Phosphate – P for Plunder – Morocco’s exports of phosphate from occupied Western Sahara and Australia’s controversial imports

A report, launched on 13 June by Western Sahara Resource Watch, reveals that Australia now has just one importer of the controversial phosphate: Incitec Pivot.

Incitec Pivot Limited is one of ten companies on the P for Plunder report’s red list of companies involved in this unethical trade, spending US$11million per annum on the high-grade phosphate to use in the production of superphosphate fertilisers. By coincidence, it is currently receiving yet another phosphate shipment from Western Sahara in Geelong on board the Western FedoraWesfarmers/CSBP is on the orange list of “companies under observation”. This is because although it has put its imports on hold for the past 2 years, it has reserved the right to make a commercial decision to resume if need be. Continue reading →