Polisario alleges a “geopolitical” criterion in the election of Morocco as president of the UN Human Rights Council

2024-01-11 03:41:25

The Saharawi representative in Switzerland assures that he will seek to prevent South Africa from denouncing “Israeli crimes” from his position.

MADRID, 11 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Polisario Front assured this Wednesday that Morocco has been elected as president of the UN Human Rights Council based on “political and geopolitical” criteria instead of “legal” criteria with the aim of preventing South Africa from occupying the position, thus avoiding the denunciation “of Israeli crimes” in the Gaza Strip.

“Influential international groups have exerted great pressure to prevent Pretoria from assuming the presidency of the Council for fear that Geneva would become another The Hague to denounce the crimes of the Israeli occupation throughout the year 2024,” declared the representative of the Polisario in Switzerland, Abiy Bashraya al Bashir, to the Saharawi news agency SPS.

Furthermore, he has criticized that the election has been based on “a political, or rather geopolitical, criterion, and not on a legal one, as one would expect, as a result of the great pressure exerted by some influential forces” whose objective is to “block the path” of the defense of “the rights of the people and their just causes.

In that sense, he explained that Morocco will turn a “blind eye to the war of extermination in Palestine” and that it will “try to evade” progress in Human Rights within its own territory.

Likewise, he has complained about the “structural defect” of the election system for the position, alleging that if respect for Human Rights were taken into account, Rabat would have lost the vote due to “its black record, its military occupation of Western Sahara and its refusal to ratify the (African Charter on Human Rights).”

Polisario has stated on numerous occasions that Morocco’s election would be an insult to all of Africa and had asked Council members not to endorse Rabat.

This Wednesday, Morocco beat South Africa in a vote for the presidency of the UN Human Rights Council in 2024, something that the country’s authorities have celebrated as international “recognition” of the work carried out by the Alawite kingdom in matters of rights and freedoms.

The presidency, a symbolic position that implies greater prominence and coordination of meetings, is reserved in 2024 for the group of African countries, which, due to the lack of consensus, have finally put two options on the table, which has forced a vote. secret for the first time since 2021.