This call was made during the general debate on the annual report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the world, on the occasion of the 57th regular session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), which is being held in Geneva under the presidency of Morocco.
During the interactive debate open to civil society, the NGOs warned of the “worrying” humanitarian conditions in the Tindouf camps where the sequestered populations endure “serious violations” of their most basic rights, but also of the “systematic” misappropriation of aid by the Polisario leaders “with the complicity of the Algerian army which is besieging the camps to prevent any exit”.
Punctuated by poignant testimonies, their interventions notably highlighted the campaigns of repression carried out against young people who dare, at the risk of their lives, to denounce these actions on social networks, citing the numerous cases of kidnapping, arbitrary disappearance and torture of which they are victims, in addition to the glaring lack of food.
In such conditions, some of them find no other choice to feed their families and provide for their needs than to “join armed groups in the Sahel”, deplore the organizations, including the African Network for the Development of Governance and Human Rights (RADHEG) and the International Committee for the Respect and Application of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (CIRAC).
“We call on the international community to put pressure on Algeria to fully assume its international commitments as a host country to guarantee the protection of the populations held in the Tindouf camps,” insisted the associative actors who demand an end to the abuses and the opening of judicial investigations into this matter.
They further denounced the forced disappearances in the Tindouf camps, saying that the separatists resort to disappearances and other abuses in order to silence and intimidate the population.
The annual report on the situation of human rights in the world is the subject of a general debate during the 57th ordinary session of the CDH which is held until October 11 under the chairmanship of Ambassador Omar Zniber, Permanent Representative of Morocco to the United Nations Office in Geneva and current President of the Human Rights Council (HRC) for the year 2024.
2024-09-13 12:20:32