Fifty Years in Exile: Human Rights and the Forgotten Dilemma in Western Sahara
Embarka sits in her outdoor tents, pitched on the sandy ground in the large stretch of southwestern Algeria’s desert, in between wide varieties of such shelters spread throughout the sand dunes.Brewing Sahrawi tea over a little fire as she defines leaving her homeland, her voice breaks: “It is difficult to mention this due to the fact that it is an awful past for us … for days we remained straying in the desert. We discovered no person to offer us food or beverage, and this profession followed us Sahrawi people– from bombing us to firing us with weapons and following us everywhere.” (Interview,2010
Aza, who lived through the mass trip, defines when soldiers went searching from residence to house for Sahrawis on their listing: “When soldiers entered and did not discover a person,” she states, “they broke glass and took the jewelry and various other belongings they located. Once, they had blades and clashed them with each other, took garments from the outdoor tents and tore them apart, to frighten the women in the camping tent.” (Meeting,2010 Embarka and Aza are amongst the 173, 600 Sahrawi refugees looking for humanitarian aid in Algeria’s Tindouf camps. The refugees have stayed there since Morocco and Mauritania attacked North Africa’s Western Sahara in 1975, displacing over half the populace.
Life Under Line of work
In February, the Harvard Human Rights Program, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, the HLS Supporters for Human Rights, and Harvard African Law Organization co-hosted an event at Harvard Regulation College drawing attention to the virtually 50 -year circumstances of the Sahrawis’ battle for self-reliance. Audio speakers at the occasion shed light on the implications of the 1975 Madrid Accords, when Spain delivered the Spanish protectorate to Morocco and Mauritania. Regardless Of the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Point of view that year concluding that there was no “tie of territorial sovereignty” in between the Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco, Morocco continues to occupy the territory to now.
For generations of Sahrawis who continued to be in busy Western Sahara, suppression is a daily fact. In 2013, a 14 -year-old child called Abubakk shared his experience with Moroccan authorities: “I had begun to run with my pals in the objection when the authorities began to comply with and terrify me. They chased me while on a bike, and I can simply remember that I got up on the earth … Requiring me into the auto and blindfolded me, they struck and defeat me. Playing psychological games with me, they asked me who had actually beat me, and eliminated the blindfold, intimidated to rape me, along with various other physical dangers. After that, they offered me a flag of the Polisario front [the Sahrawi resistance movement that has pursued independence since 1973] and compelled me to step on it. I did not intend to, however when they began to beat me once again, I could not handle that. When I stood on the flag, the authorities took a picture of me.” (Meeting,2013
Under line of work, Hassani, a Sahrawi activist in Western Sahara, shares that “Young people grow up seeing their dreams restricted by repression … expression for self-determination can land you in prison or even worse. Gatherings are banned, waving the Sahrawi flag can be dealt with as a crime. We are regularly checked. Lots of sustain physical assaults merely for providing testimony. Our voices are silent unless we resemble the official Moroccan narrative. I know loads personally who have been randomly restrained or disappeared. Some have been missing out on for years. My neighbors have their own son who was abducted and vanished in 1995” (Interview,2025
Amnesty International reports that in January 2024, cops “violently spread a tranquil demo by Sahrawi women activists in Laayoune and subjected militants to poundings.” Amnesty continues to keep in mind that, in February 2024, cops avoided a press conference by a team of Sahrawi civils rights protectors from taking place in Laayoune. The report documents that, in April 2024, the Moroccan army and gendarmerie bulldozed and ruined the homes of 12 Sahrawi family members in Al-Jitir.
“Naming and Reproaching” the Unabashed: A Need for a lot more Oversight
Embarka fails in her speech as she sobs: “One more point that breaks my heart is individuals enjoying this circumstance around the world, people seeing what is here in Western Sahara throughout this long time and not questioning, and there is no other way, absolutely nothing on the ground taking place in the direction of this issue worrying the Sahrawi individuals.” Amnesty International and Civils Rights Watch have for years required a required of the UN Peacekeeping Goal to Western Sahara, MINURSO, to include civils rights monitoring, as the only modern-day UN peacekeeping mission without such a mandate. UN Secretary-General António Guterres denounced Morocco’s failure, dating as far back as 2015, to provide the Workplace of the High Commissioner for Civil Rights (OHCHR) access to Western Sahara.
Sahrawis are separated by a 1, 700 -mile berm “greatly contaminated by landmines,” according to the United Nations Mine Action Service Hassani shares: “Households have actually been torn apart for years. We connect in secret or on-line, however visiting each other is typically impossible.” As a refugee beyond of the berm, Yougiha notes: “splitting up is heartbreaking: we depend on memories, letters and telephone call.” (Meeting,2025
Recently, the UN signified a public health situation in the refugee camps. In a June 2025 UN press release, UN firms, the World Food Program, and the World Wellness Organization highlight that the International Severe Poor nutrition price in the evacuee camps of Tindouf got to 13 6 %, signifying intense conditions by that requirements. Journalism launch notes that 65 % of youngsters and 69 % of women of reproductive age experience anemia, while one in 3 kids are growth stunted; at the exact same time, just 34 % people financing committed for the Sahrawi Evacuee Response Strategy has reached the camps. These altruistic problems leave the health and wellness and fates of evacuee kids and their mommies at risk.
Morocco’s systematic offenses straight breach its obligations to maintaining these legal rights as a party to the Convention Versus Torture, as a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Civil Liberties , particularly Write-up 7: “No person shall undergo torture or to vicious, merciless or derogatory treatment or penalty,” and as having actually acceded to the 4 Geneva Conventions on July 26, 1956, consisting of the 4th Geneva Convention , which lays out defenses for private citizens in busy territories. To prevent violations against Sahrawis from proceeding with immunity, the UN Safety and security Council should extend MINURSO’s required to include human rights monitoring within its peacekeeping objective to Western Sahara. This would certainly ensure “independent, objective, extensive and continual surveillance of the civils rights situation,” which the UN Secretary-General in 2021 called “necessary to make sure the protection of all people in Western Sahara.”
Additionally, the worldwide neighborhood can push the Moroccan federal government to enable the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to get in Western Sahara according to Protection Council resolution 2548 (2020 and strengthen the independence and impartiality of its 2018 National Preventive Device Against Torture, given that, in 2021, the UN Committee Against Torture found Morocco in violation of the Convention Versus Torture for its detention of Sahrawi political prisoner Omar N’dour.
Till such surveillance devices are established, the human expense of inaction is continuous torment and ill-treatment of Sahrawis , including kids, while leaving refugees in expatriation and suffering. Yougiha Molay, a young Sahrawi evacuee who dreams of returning to her ancestral homeland, shares that life is a “everyday struggle, with limited sources, no actual home, and constant uncertainty.” In Yougiha’s words, Sahrawis endure “the wishing for home and the obstacle of reconstructing a life from absolutely nothing.” (Interview,2025
The Course of Strength and Hope
Amid these consistent challenges and the trauma of variation, Sahrawis still hold onto routines that preserve their ancestral connection. One example central to Sahrawi life is the tea event. As the gives off perfumes blend with the solid, sugary scent of her tea-making, with smoky floats increasing in the desert outdoor tents air, Embarka says that what is required for the tea is “charcoal, individuals, and time.” Fatimatu explains, “The event of tea was a very crucial minute to transmit background, faith, [and] to teach youngsters about background for Sahrawi individuals. They talked about the rain, regarding locations they might look for animals, and that was mosting likely to win standard ready youth.” Throughout Spanish manifest destiny, Sahrawis talked openly throughout tea celebrations without fearing the security of authorities. A suggestion of the homeland active in their cumulative memory, the tea event, uses hope amidst their current situations.
Even after 5 years of suffering, Sahrawis cherish the hope of a pathway forward. Alien Abdarahman, a Sahrawi refugee, shares that: “hope is, in shāʾ Allāh , at some point justice will certainly come, family members will certainly rejoin, kids will grow up totally free in their land. We commonly discover hope in seeing youngsters laugh and play” (Interview,2025 Hassani, in Western Sahara, concurs: “As long as we remain to tell our fact, hope lives on.”
Nina Nedrebo is an Ed.M.’ 25 Candidate in Education Policy and Evaluation at the Harvard Grad College of Education And Learning. After collaborating with UN firms for Sahrawi refugees in Algeria, training in Norway and Minnesota, and most just recently in Holyoke, Massachusetts, she is committed to comprehending and reacting to the needs of youth that call for very early treatment to avoid and address childhood years trauma. Nina holds a B.A. in history from Mount Holyoke College, an MBA from the College of St. Thomas, and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Mentor from Boston College.
Views expressed on Harvard Civil rights Reflections are those of the specific authors and do not always mirror the opinions or positions of the Civil rights Program or Harvard Legislation School.