Occupied El-Aaiun, 03 January 2026 (SPS) – The Sahrawi Association of Victims of Gross Human Rights Violations Committed by Morocco (ASVDH) condemned the policy pursued by the Moroccan occupying state in the occupied part of Western Sahara, based on the seizure of Sahrawi land and the deprivation of Sahrawis of their historical and legal rights to it, in violation of human rights and international law.
In a statement issued Thursday, ASVDH denounced “the Moroccan occupation resorting to stripping Sahrawi rightful owners of their lands and resources in the context of the reality of occupation imposed on the occupied territories, which is based on a colonial logic that subjects the land to administrative and legal procedures imposed by force, used to exclude the indigenous population and enable its companies and incoming settlers in the occupied territory to seize land that does not belong to them.”
It pointed out that “this systematic policy has turned into a tool for plunder and for legitimizing appropriation, through ignoring international law and norms and imposing laws and administrative procedures that lack any international or legal legitimacy, in clear violation of the right to property, international humanitarian law, and human rights law.”
ASVDH considers that these practices aim to “change the demographic and economic structure of the occupied territory, by encouraging settlement and enabling settlers to control land and resources, in return for the displacement and dispossession of Sahrawis of their rights and means of livelihood. This constitutes a serious infringement of the rights of the indigenous population and of the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to their land, resources, self-determination, and freedom.”
ASVDH called on international bodies and United Nations mechanisms concerned with human rights to intervene urgently to put an end to the policy of seizing Sahrawi lands in Western Sahara.
It reaffirmed that the imposition of a “fait accompli policy through politicized laws or administrative procedures will not change the legal status of the territory or the justice of the Sahrawi cause,” stressing that the land “will remain the core of the conflict and one of the most prominent manifestations of the ongoing violations against the Sahrawi people.”
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