Recommendations

To the UN Security Council

Expand the mandate of MINURSO (UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara) to include human rights monitoring and reporting in both Western Sahara and in the Polisario-administered camps in Algeria; or establish another mechanism by which the UN provides regular, on-the-ground human rights monitoring and reporting there.

Recommendations to the Government of Morocco

Permit on-the-ground monitoring of human rights conditions in Western Sahara by an appropriate UN mechanism such as MINURSO, should the UN expand its mandate.

Revise or abolish articles of the Press Code, the Law on Associations, and other legislation that criminalize speech and political or associative activities deemed affronts to Morocco's "territorial integrity" and that are used to suppress nonviolent advocacy in favor of Sahrawi political rights.

Implement and oversee thorough and independent investigations into allegations by civilians of human rights abuse by police; ensure that the search for the truth involves soliciting additional information from the persons who filed the complaints and, when potentially useful, their families; make public the results of such investigations as well as the administrative or disciplinary measures, if any, that are taken in response.

Where the evidence warrants, bring charges against public agents implicated in acts of torture, including those who give instructions to torture or those in position of authority who should have known about the torture and failed to take action to prevent it or punish those responsible.

Investigate, specifically, the conduct of three officers whom complainants have repeatedly cited as personally involved in abusing Sahrawis in El-Ayoun during the period 2005-2007: Ichi abou el-Hassan, Moustapha Kamouri, and Aziz Annouche; initiate disciplinary or judicial measures against them if the results of a diligent and impartial investigation show such measures to be warranted.

Ensure that local administrative authorities comply with Morocco's Law on Associations by halting their practice of refusing to accept the founding papers submitted by independent associations that are following the procedures for obtaining legal status. More broadly, authorities should restrict the right of persons to form and act within associations only in accordance with the narrowly defined criteria specified in the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights.

Allow the right of peaceful assembly to all persons, including advocates of Sahrawi self-determination, in accordance with Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Authorities should restrict the right of peaceful assembly only when there is credible evidence of a threat to "national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others," and only then to the most limited restriction necessary, in both scope and time.

Take steps to ensure that the courts reach verdicts in politically charged cases based on the examination and impartial weighing of all relevant evidence. Judges and prosecutors should act to curb immunity for police who mistreat suspects in custody or use improper coercion to extract incriminating statements. They should do so by, among other things, giving effect to suspects' right under Moroccan law to demand medical examinations to check for evidence of mistreatment and rejecting as evidence any statement that is established to have been made as a result of torture.

Continue the positive steps Morocco has recently taken in lifting reservations to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, by ratifying the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. That protocol requires states parties to allow access to all places of detention to a national body "for the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," as well as to a subcommittee of the UN Committee against Torture. Under the terms of the protocol, both the UN subcommittee and the body established at the national level shall advise the government on steps "to strengthen the protection of persons deprived of their liberty against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Recommendations Regarding Human Rights in the Tindouf Camps

The Tindouf refugee camps represent an anomalous situation. The host state – Algeria – has in practice ceded stewardship of the camps, including responsibility for ensuring human rights, to a liberation movement, the Polisario Front. The camp population lives in harsh desert conditions as refugees from their homeland. Although the Polisario Front and many camp residents declare that their overriding goal is to achieve the right to self-determination, the Polisario– and the host state of Algeria – must ensure, on an ongoing basis, respect for all of the human rights of camp residents.

Given the allegations of human rights abuses that have arisen in Polisario-run camps over the past three decades, Human Rights Watch believes that the camps merit regular, on-the-ground scrutiny by human rights organizations and international bodies. Such scrutiny is not currently being conducted, either by the UN or others. The remote and isolated nature of the camps, and the abdication of responsibility by the host state of Algeria, heightens the importance of including the Tindouf camps in any international program of human rights monitoring for Western Sahara.

To the Polisario Front

Permit an appropriate UN mechanism such as MINURSO – should the UN expand its mandate – to conduct on-the-ground monitoring of human rights conditions in the Tindouf refugee camps and in any part of Western Sahara that is under de facto Polisario control.

Guarantee the rights of all camp residents to freedom of association, assembly, and expression, including by:

• Ensuring that camp residents are free to challenge peacefully the leadership of the Polisario Front and to advocate options for Western Sahara other than independence.
• Reinforcing the right to freedom of expression by eliminating, or significantly restricting the scope of, the broadly worded Article 52bis of the SADR Penal Code, which provides prison terms for distributing publications that could "damage the public interest."
• Ensuring that interpretations of the SADR's Penal Code articles relating to national security offenses are consistent with international human rights law.
• Reinforcing the right of assembly by amending articles of the Penal Code that criminalize participating in an unarmed public assembly deemed likely to "disturb the public order," a standard that is too broad and subject to a repressive interpretation.

Ensure camp residents' unfettered right to freedom of movement and take pro-active measures so that all camp residents know that they are free to leave the camps, including, if they wish, to settle in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

Realize its pledge to eradicate all vestiges of slavery in the camps through educating the public and all civil servants, inviting and investigating complaints from the public, acting decisively to end any cases of slavery-like practices, and adopting necessary measures so that serious penalties may be imposed for infractions, including where qadi's (judges) refuse to perform marriages without the consent of an "owner".

With respect to confinement of women who have children born out-of-wedlock, amend the Penal Code to decriminalize consensual sex between adults, which infringes on the right to privacy, and cancel all penalties pending against persons convicted of this "offense." To the extent that the Polisario confines women purportedly at risk of "honor crimes" because of their putative sexual activity, it must ensure that no woman is thus "protectively" confined against her will. It must also offer effective non-custodial forms of protection to women.

To the Government of Algeria

Permit on-the-ground monitoring and human rights conditions in the Tindouf camps by an appropriate UN mechanism such as MINURSO, should the UN expand its mandate.

Change its apparent posture of ceding to the Polisario Front responsibility for the protection of the human rights of the population of the Tindouf refugee camps; and publicly acknowledge its own responsibility for ensuring respect for the rights of all persons on Algerian territory. This includes intervening if and when human rights violations are taking place and ensuring that perpetrators are held responsible.

To Third-Party Governments and Regional Bodies

Third-party governments engaged in seeking a solution to the Western Sahara conflict should:

• Ensure, pending a resolution of the conflict, that the Sahrawi people, whether under de facto Moroccan or Polisario administration, enjoy their full rights to freedom of association, assembly and expression; to that end, support an expansion of the mandate of MINURSO to include human rights monitoring and reporting in the Polisario-administered camps as well as in Western Sahara, or establish another mechanism by which the United Nations provides regular, on-the-ground human rights monitoring and reporting there.
• Encourage Algeria to acknowledge and assume its responsibility to ensure respect for the human rights of the Sahrawi refugees residing in Polisario-administered camps on Algerian territory.
• Ensure that any future resolution of the conflict, whatever form it takes, guarantees the rights of association, assembly, and expression of the Sahrawi people, as well as for all other persons who live in the same political entity.

The European Union, having recently upgraded the status of its relations with Morocco to "advanced status," should ensure, pending a resolution of the conflict, that the Sahrawi people, whether living under de facto Moroccan or Polisario administration, enjoy their full rights to freedom of association, assembly and expression. To that end, the EU should not only continue to encourage the government of Morocco to widen the space generally for freedom of expression, association and assembly, but also specify, publicly, that such rights must extend to persons who peacefully advocate in favor of Sahrawi self-determination.

Human Rights Watch also urges the Arab League and the African Union, as regional bodies with a direct interest in the Western Sahara conflict, to implement the same recommendations made to the European Union.  

Recommendations to the US and France

The U.S. and France have voiced qualified support for Morocco's autonomy plan. These two countries, along with any other country that supports the autonomy plan or any other proposal for resolving the Western Sahara conflict, should explicitly condition that support on a commitment by the relevant authorities to fully respect the human rights of all citizens, including the right to speak and act nonviolently in favor of their preferred vision of the political future of Western Sahara.

As allies of both Morocco and Algeria, and as permanent members of the UN Security Council, France and the United States should lead the effort at the Council to expand the mandate of MINURSO to include human rights monitoring and reporting in both Western Sahara and in the Polisario-administered refugee camps, or to establish another mechanism by which the United Nations provides regular, on-the-ground human rights monitoring and reporting there.

With respect to the United States, we regret that in its monitoring of, and reporting on, human rights conditions worldwide, including in Western Sahara, it has paid scant attention to the Tindouf refugee camps. It should collect pertinent information both in the camps and, where appropriate, outside them, and speak publicly about human rights conditions there, including in the State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.