Canton to Present Observations from RFK Human Rights Delegation to W Sahara (2013-01-08) In August 2012, Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, led an international delegation to assess the human rights situation in Western Sahara. On February 4, 2013, Santiago A. Canton, Director of RFK Partners for Human Rights, will present the delegations preliminary observations to an audience in Rome, Italy. Western Sahara is known as Africas last colony. There has been an ongoing conflict since 1975, when Morocco occupied Western Sahara despite an International Court of Justice ruling that Morocco did not have a legitimate claim to the territory. The invasion has led to a decades-old conflict between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, a national movement committed to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara. With the war and Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, its native people—the Sahrawi—were divided in two, those living under Moroccan Occupation and those living in refugee camps in Algeria. The United Nations Mission for the Referendum of Western Sahara (MINURSO) was created in 1991 to provide an international presence to oversee a cease-fire. The mission was also tasked with helping to administer a referendum on self-determination for Western Sahara, but the referendum never took place. Instead, Morocco consistently violates the basic human rights of the Sahrawi people, particularly those who advocate for change in Western Sahara. In its attempt to stop dissenting opinions concerning Western Sahara and the Sahrawi people, Morocco has demonstrated intolerance for political dissent. Moroccan authorities routinely prevents non-violent assembly; interferes with the formation and functioning of NGOs; persecutes those who publicly express dissenting viewpoints; and tortures, harasses, arbitrarily detains, and disappears Sahrawi civilians and human rights defenders that support the self-determination of Western Sahara. For more information about the situation in Western Sahara, visit the RFK Centers page on RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Aminatou Haidar. Click here for more information about the upcoming event in Rome
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 19:54:47 +0000
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