The permanent representative of Algeria to the United Nations Office and other International Organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Lazhar Soualem, called on the international community on Friday, especially the United Nations, to fulfil its obligations and assume its responsibilities to Western Sahara people by ensuring their inalienable and imprescriptible right to self-determination.
In an address at the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Ambassador Soualem reaffirmed Algeria’s commitment to the resolutions of the Security Council and the legal principles and decisions of the International Court of Justice regarding the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, which consider that “the conflict is a decolonisation issue that must inevitably be resolved through the principle of self-determination.”
The Algerian diplomat called on states, the UN Human Rights Council, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to “fulfil their international commitments” and to “assume their responsibilities towards the people of Western Sahara currently under occupation, by guaranteeing their inalienable right to self-determination”, arguing that the Sahrawi people “cannot remain indefinitely hostage to the stubbornness of the Moroccan occupying state, which continues to ignore its international commitments towards Africa’s last colony.”
Soualem also urged the Human Rights Council, commissions, and other bodies of the United Nations to “monitor the human rights conditions and violations of the Sahrawi people in the occupied territories, including arbitrary arrests, summary executions, blockades, repression of freedom of assembly and movement, and plundering of Sahrawi natural resources, especially since the violation of the ceasefire agreement by the Moroccan occupying state.”
