Human Rights: an Obstacle to Peace in the Western Sahara? (ARI)

Area: Mediterranean & Arab World ARI 47/2011 (Translated from Spanish) Date: 11/4/2011 Human Rights: An Obstacle to Peace in the Western Sahara? (ARI) Renata Capella Soler* Theme: The establishment of a human rights monitoring mechanism in the Western Sahara, preferably through an expansion of MINURSO’s mandate, would change the underlying dynamics of the conflict and allow for progress in the negotiation process. Summary: The focus on human rights in the Western Sahara has increased the visibility of the conflict and the pressure to resolve it, creating opportunities to break the current impasse that third parties should seize. A human rights monitoring mechanism, preferably as part of MINURSO, could serve as a confidence-building measure. Moreover, a firm position regarding the parties’ human rights obligations would set a precedent for an international mediation with more muscle, thus changing the conflict’s underlying dynamics. Close coordination between Spain and the UK to establish a human rights monitoring mechanism would neutralise French opposition to it, alter the balance of forces within the Group of Friends of the Secretary General on Western Sahara (the ‘Group of Friends’) and give rise to the conditions necessary to increase its efficiency. At the upcoming April session, a Security Council decision to set up a human rights monitoring mechanism would allow for progress in the negotiation process, bringing closer the resolution of the Western Sahara conflict. Analysis: In the last two years, the need to establish a human rights monitoring mechanism together with the possible expansion of the current mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) were the primary focus of the Security Council debates on Western Sahara. Unless prior agreement on the matter is reached, the debate is likely to resume with even greater intensity at the upcoming Security Council meeting to be held in April 2011. At this meeting, the Council will convene to consider the next report of the Secretary-General on the situation in the Western Sahara and decide on the extension of MINURSO’s mandate. This year Spain is not a Security Council member. However, as a member of the EU, and the ‘Group of Friends’ in particular, Spain will inevitably be drawn into the debate and will have to face demands for it to adopt a clear stance on the matter. As far as Spanish diplomacy is concerned, this is not only a challenge but also an opportunity to show leadership in multilateral settings by establishing alliances and launching initiatives that contribute to resolving a situation that is widely considered unsustainable. In Resolution 1920 of 30 April 2010, the Security Council also recognised that ‘the consolidation of the status quo is not acceptable in the long term’. * Signature. 1 Area: Mediterranean & Arab World ARI 47/2011 (Translated from Spanish) Date: 11/4/2011 Human rights: A Stumbling Block on the Road to Peace? There is concern that the increased focus on human rights might distract the attention of the Security Council from the political issues that are at stake in Western Sahara. Another criticism is that rather than being a demand driven by true concern, the Polisario Front’s insistence on the human rights issue is a tactical ploy to attack Morocco. The focus on human rights in the Security Council debate on the Western Sahara must be seen in a wider context. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been the practice of the Security Council to link human rights to the maintenance of international peace and security. By way of example, Security Council Resolution 688 (1991) condemned ‘the repression of the Iraqi civilian population’, demanded that Iraq put an end to it ‘as a contribution to remove the threat to international peace and security in the region’ and expressed hope that a dialogue would ‘ensure that the human and political rights of all Iraqi citizens are respected’. A more recent example is Security Council Resolution 1970 (2011).1 After deploring ‘the gross and systematic violation of human rights, including the repression of peaceful demonstrators’, the resolution refers the situation in Libya since 15 February 2011 to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and underlines ‘the need to respect the freedoms of peaceful assembly and of expression, including freedom of the media’. Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, Resolution 1970 calls for ‘steps to fulfil the legitimate demands of the population’ and urges the Libyan authorities ‘to allow immediate access for international human rights monitors’ and to ‘immediately lift restrictions on all forms of media’. Ignoring the human rights situation in Western Sahara and failing to examine it by the standards applied to Libya at the upcoming April session would expose the Security Council to allegations of selectivity in the application of universally-recognised norms. This could seriously undermine its credibility and thus affect its capacity to maintain peace and security in the region. Furthermore, by putting on the table of the Security Council the expansion of MINURSO’s mandate, the Polisario Front has integrated into its diplomatic strategy a recommendation made years earlier by international human-rights organisations (Amnesty International’s campaign goes back as far as 1992). Be that as it may, a Security Council decision to give a mandate to MINURSO to monitor human rights in Western Sahara and the Tindouf refugee camps (on Algerian territory) would require the consent of Morocco, the Polisario Front and Algeria, putting to the test the commitment to human rights of all three parties. The Focus on Human Rights: Effect Rather than Cause of Conflict Irresolution In 2006 the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded in a confidential report leaked to the press2 that almost all violations against the people of Western Sahara stemmed from the non-implementation of the right to self-determination. This suggests that rather than being the cause, the focus on human rights is an effect of the failure to find a political solution that allows self-determination. Against the background of broken promises to hold a referendum, the lack of viability of the armed struggle and a stalled diplomatic process, the right to self-determination has become a major campaign theme for Sahrawi activists on the basis of Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil 1 See http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/245/58/PDF/N1124558.pdf?OpenElement. 2 See http://www.arso.org/OHCHRrep2006en.pdf. 2 Area: Mediterranean & Arab World ARI 47/2011 (Translated from Spanish) Date: 11/4/2011 and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966. In order to repress their activities and to intimidate the population of Western Sahara, the Moroccan authorities have used legislation prohibiting attacks on Morocco’s ‘territorial integrity’. In this context, violations of the rights of expression, association and assembly have occurred as well as unfair trials, ill-treatment, torture and police violence. Morocco has further restricted media access and expelled international observers. A 2008 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report3 concluded that the ‘limits to Morocco’s progress on human rights are apparent in the way authorities suppress opposition to the officially held position that Western Sahara is part of Morocco’. Human rights violations linked to the lack of a resolution of the conflict have also been documented in the Tindouf camps administered by the Polisario Front. For example, in September 2010, the police officer Mostafa Salma Sidi Mouloud was arbitrarily detained after publicly expressing support for the Moroccan autonomy proposal –which excludes a referendum with an independence option as advocated by the Polisario Front– and announcing that he would further promote it in the Tindouf camps. Increasing the Visibility of a Forgotten Conflict In a 2004 interview to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the former US Secretary of State and Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for Western Sahara from 1997 to 2004, James Baker, pointed out that its low profile in the international order made the resolution of the Western Sahara conflict difficult to achieve. It would therefore seem fair to conclude that by raising its profile on the international agenda and making it more visible4 the focus on human rights has added pressure to resolve the conflict, and thus the chances that it this might occur. Three major events have strengthened international solidarity on the basis of the human rights discourse: the 2005 Sahrawi uprising (intifada), Aminetu Haidar’s defiance in resisting her expulsion from El-Ayoun through a hunger-strike in 2009 and the actions linked to the Gdeim Izik protest camp in November 2010. The challenge is to design diplomatic strategies that take advantage of the pressure and interest that the human rights issue has aroused to transform the relations between the stakeholders and break the impasse. In this endeavour, third parties play a key role. The Need to Create New Dynamics to Make the Diplomatic Process Advance The 2007 International Crisis Group (ICG) report, ‘Out of the Impasse’, anticipated that without a change in the underlying dynamics of the conflict, efforts to find a negotiated solution on the basis of the proposals submitted by Morocco and the Polisario Front were doomed to fail. Since then, several rounds of informal talks have not even yielded an agreement on the framework for negotiations: each party continues to reject the proposal of the other as the sole basis for future negotiations even though the Polisario Front has signalled its willingness to seriously engage with Morocco’s proposal if there is reciprocity. 3 See http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/12/19/human-rights-western-sahara-and-tindouf-refugee-camps-0.

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