Question 13789 — foreign policy

Summary

Mr. Loïc Prud'homme alerts the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs about the situation in Western Sahara and the fate of Sahrawi refugees. At its meeting on April 27, 2018, the United Nations Security Council voted for a resolution extending for 6 months the mandate of the United Nations mission for the organization of a referendum in Western Sahara. On October 31, 2018, this mandate will be called into question and with it a process that has been underway for 27 years now and still not finalized to this day. This process was put in place to respond to the demand of the Sahrawi people to assert their right to self-determination in the territory of Western Sahara, in southern Morocco, materialized by the declaration of independence of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in 1976 by the Polisario front, a Sahrawi representation supported by Algeria. From For more than 30 years, this non-autonomous territory has been in conflict with Morocco and its status still remains to be defined today. Morocco continues to perpetrate persecution with proven risks of torture on the Sahrawi people, 170,000 of whom currently live in refugee camps in the south of Algeria, in deplorable conditions and with no prospect of exit. Despite this situation, the inertia of diplomacy international is total, allowing a source of indignation to grow that is increasingly violent and dangerous for the maintenance of peace. This status quo forces a growing number of refugees to reach European territory and in particular France. Many of them found themselves in Gironde and encountered difficulties simply asserting their rights, forced into living conditions just as difficult as in the camps in southern Algeria. No status is recognized for them: very rarely that of political refugee, never yet that of stateless person for which some have been waiting for a response for more than two years. They then live in slums from which they always end up being evicted by the public authorities. In conclusion of his latest report on the question of Western Sahara, the Secretary General of the United Nations considers textually that “this conflict has lasted too long and it must be brought to an end in the interest of the population, so that they can live in dignity, including for people displaced for more than 40 years as well as for the stability of the entire region, which faces many political, economic and security problems”. This is why he questions the Government on the way in which France, a member of the United Nations Security Council, designs the application of international law in Western Sahara and on solutions allowing Saharawi nationals to be treated more dignifiedly on French territory.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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