Melbourne (Australia), 18 September 2026 (SPS) – The Polisario Front Representative in Australia, Mohamed Fadel Kamal, participated in an academic conference organized Thursday by the Melbourne Law School, focusing on the state and effectiveness of contemporary international human rights law.
The conference brought together a range of academics and experts from diverse professional and legal backgrounds.
The conference, held under the title “Have We Failed Human Rights Law?”, aimed to open a discussion on the challenges facing the human rights system and the international institutions entrusted with protecting it, as well as ways to enhance its effectiveness amid the crises and conflicts affecting the world.
The participation of the Polisario Front Representative provided an opportunity to highlight the Western Sahara issue as a clear example of the gap between the recognition of rights under international law and their implementation on the ground.
In this context, the Sahrawi diplomat stressed that the situation in Western Sahara demonstrates that the weakness of international human rights law does not necessarily lie in the absence of legal rules, but rather in the lack of the political will needed to implement them.
He clarified that one of the major challenges facing the Sahrawi people is the gap between their internationally recognized rights and the absence of effective mechanisms enabling them to enforce those rights and obtain redress. He noted that Western Sahara remains on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories and that the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination enjoys international recognition, while effective monitoring of human rights violations remains absent.
Mr. Kamal stressed that a right for which there is no effective means of enforcement and protection can become merely a theoretical right. He underlined that the continuation of the conflict for more than five decades has left profound humanitarian and human rights consequences, including the separation of families and the continued existence of generations of refugees in the camps, as well as the restrictions faced by Sahrawis in the territory when defending independence and the right to self-determination.
In response to the conference's central question as to whether international human rights law has failed, the Sahrawi diplomat clarified that the legal principles themselves had not failed; rather, the failure lies in their implementation and in the selective application of international law.
He pointed out that international law has contributed to preserving the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination throughout the past decades, and that Western Sahara remains on the United Nations decolonization agenda. However, he stressed that there is a significant difference between recognizing a right and enabling its holders to exercise it in practice.
He said that, after more than 50 years of conflict, the situation in Western Sahara raises a fundamental question: “When does recognition of a right become the actual implementation of that right?” He warned that the selective application of international law—whereby states strongly uphold it in some conflicts while overlooking it in others because of political and strategic interests—undermines peoples' confidence in the international system.
In this regard, he affirmed that the solution does not lie in abandoning international law and human rights, but rather in demanding their consistent application, linking them to accountability, and transforming principles and resolutions from mere statements and declarations into concrete measures on the ground.
The Polisario Front Representative in Australia concluded his intervention by emphasizing that the Sahrawi experience highlights the need to move beyond recognition of rights and expressions of solidarity toward action aimed at implementing and upholding those rights.
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