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The world’s only UN mission with no human rights bureau

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 21 July 2009

Democracy Africa

By Nikolaj Nielsen
Monday, July 20 10:56 am EST

A row of Moroccan flags firmly embedded in a concrete wall too tall to scale, align a compound that has no political will and surround a United Nations mission that has no human rights bureau. Minurso, the UN Mission for the Referendum in the Western Sahara, is a sad spectacle where the single blue flag appears to reach tall into the warm sky.

But it hangs limp as the dozens of red draped green stars flutter in the slight breeze; defiant and dominant. In front of the mission’s gate are two armed Moroccan soldiers. They stare out onto an empty lot where some brave individuals had once staged a peaceful protest. Their demands for the fundamental rights of assembly, of freedom of expression and thought, were quickly kicked into the dirt by the black boots of the Moroccan security forces and their notorious DST.

The blue helmets of the mission were passive, behind their barricade sipping mint teas, their silence underlines the terrible cost of human suffering and injustice that has gone unchecked for over 34 years. As I walk by the compound, one of the soldiers approaches and asks if I work for the mission. He then tells me to leave.

This is Laayoune. A former Spanish outpost turned administrative centre where Moroccan soldiers, police, and security details are as common as the lowly soul attempting to carve out a life in the middle of this vast desert whose relative size is comparable to that of the entire UK.

Laayoune houses some 200,000 (this figure is in dispute) individuals and in its margins, in the Eraki neighbourhood and elsewhere, the Saharawi live in bland block apartments, some in slums, some in relatively decent housing. All under the tyranny of indifference and a media blackout.

Minurso was established in 1991 with a mandate to oversee a referendum for the self-determination of the Sahrawi and to keep the peace between Morocco and the Polisario. But years of deadlock, of missed opportunities, and a lack of political will in the Security Council has forced the blue helmets into a corner where comfort and complacency have replaced international law and rigour. Boredom erodes the soldier’s mind.

Their SUVs are shiny and brilliantly white, the tires a perfect black. Everything they have appears new and when parked in the asphalt lots of expensive hotels like the Nagir, the common Sahrawi can do nothing but walk by, her head turned low as the bustle of Africa’s longest territorial conflict and the UN’s last decolonisation procedure, continues unabated, unchecked and discredited.

She is alone with her thoughts, but a recurrent phrase shared by so many just like her runs like ticker tape: independence, independence now.

Source : Forein Policy Blog