Geneva (UN Human Rights Council) 18 June 2026 (SPS) — Human Rights Researcher Hayat Said, co-author of the 2025 annual report on the human rights situation in occupied Western Sahara, confirmed that the report documents nearly 170 human rights violations over the past year.
In her intervention during the speaking Today during a side event, convened on the sidelines of the ongoing 62nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council, to present the findings of the newly released report, "Western Sahara: A Year in Review, 2025 Annual Human Rights Report", the speaker praised the efforts of the Working Group on Human Rights in Occupied Western Sahara, which continues to document violations from within the territory despite the risks faced by its members.
She stated that their work contributes significantly to breaking the wall of silence imposed on the human rights situation in the occupied territories.
She warned that the actual number of victims remains much higher than the 170 cases documented due to the absence of an independent and permanent international mechanism to monitor human rights in the territory, combined with the ongoing ban preventing international observers from accessing it.
She explained that the report comes within an international context characterized by growing geopolitical tensions and a declining commitment to the rules of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, alongside unresolved decolonization processes.
Hayat pointed out that the growing global focus on natural resources and investment projects in Western Sahara raises serious questions about the impact of economic interests on the protection of human rights and the Sahrawi people's right to self-determination.
The researcher highlighted that the report tracks continuous restrictions imposed on the access of international observers, noting that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been unable to conduct regular monitoring missions to the territory for ten years. Furthermore, during 2025 alone, between 20 and 25 journalists, observers, and human rights activists were expelled, barred from entering Western Sahara, or had their missions obstructed.
Regarding economic, social, and cultural rights, the report recorded an escalation in economic reprisal policies against Sahrawis. This includes exclusion from employment opportunities, deprivation of scholarships and social assistance, and the obstruction of professional development. This pattern occurs alongside the acceleration of land confiscations to transfer them into investment projects in the fields of mining, tourism, and renewable energy, accompanied by displacement and property expropriation.
According to the speaker, the report also documents a continuous deterioration in civil and political rights, particularly through the targeting of journalists and human rights defenders, and the restriction of freedom of expression, assembly, and association. This is compounded by tight surveillance over homes and the targeting of Sahrawi students within Moroccan universities through arrests and prosecutions due to their political activism.
Hayat Said added that a quarter of the violations documented during 2025 took place inside Moroccan prisons, where Sahrawi political prisoners face harsh conditions, including long-distance deportation far from their families, solitary confinement, ill-treatment, and the denial of visits, as well as retaliatory measures against those who denounce their detention conditions.
Concluding her intervention, the co-author of the report stressed that the documented violations are neither isolated nor linked solely to the year 2025. Instead, they reflect a systematic policy that has persisted for decades under the Moroccan occupation.
She finally considered that the lack of international accountability and continued impunity contribute to the worsening situation, reaffirming that addressing the root causes of these violations remains fundamentally tied to enabling the Sahrawi people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination. (SPS)
090/500/60 (SPS)
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