UN 4th Committee reaffirms support for political process in the Sahara
The 4th Committee of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution reaffirming support for the political process in the Sahara and calling on all parties to cooperate fully with the UN Secretary-General to reach a political solution to this regional dispute.
The committee thus expresses support to the political process based on the Security Council resolutions adopted since 2007, with a view to reaching a “just, lasting and mutually acceptable political” solution to the question of the Moroccan Sahara.
The text commends the efforts made in this direction, and calls on all parties to cooperate fully with the Secretary-General, and with each other, in order to reach a “political solution which is mutually acceptable”.
This resolution, like the Committee’s previous ones and those adopted by the Security Council for two decades, does not at any time mention the referendum, dead and buried by the UN Secretary-General, the General Assembly, and the UN Security Council.
The UN General Assembly also welcomes in this resolution the parties’ commitment to continue to demonstrate political will and to work in an atmosphere conducive to dialogue, on the basis of the efforts made and the developments since 2006.
It should be noted that the only new fact in the political process since 2006 is the presentation by Morocco on April 11, 2007 of the Autonomy Initiative, deemed as a serious and credible initiative for the final settlement of this regional dispute. Since then, the Security Council’s successive resolutions have enshrined the preeminence of the autonomy initiative and determined the parameters of the settlement of the regional dispute, namely a political, realistic, pragmatic, lasting and compromise-based solution.
Several Resolutions consecrated the round table process and defined, once and for all, its four participants, namely Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario.
These Security Council resolutions also welcome the measures and initiatives taken by Morocco for the promotion and protection of human rights in its southern provinces, and the role played by the Commissions of the National Human Rights Council in Laâyoune and Dakhla, as well as Morocco’s interaction with the mechanisms of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
They also reiterate the request of the UN executive body for the registration and census of the populations of the Tindouf camps, and demand the deployment of the necessary efforts to this end.
The Security Council resolutions, namely resolutions 2414, 2440, 2468, 2494 and 2548, had ordered the Polisario to withdraw from the buffer zone of Guerguarat and to cease all its destabilizing acts to the east of the defense system in the Moroccan Sahara and to refrain from any action likely to undermine the UN political process.
