Algiers, 6 April 2025 (SPS) — The Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, concluded on Saturday his visit to the Sahrawi refugee camps focusing on the current situation and future prospects of the UN-sponsored peace process in Africa’s last colony, and during which the attachment of the Sahrawi people to their legitimate rights to self-determination and independence was reaffirmed.
During his two-day visit, which was in preparation for his upcoming briefing to the UN Security Council in mid-April, De Mistura met with Sahrawi officials, led by the President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Brahim Ghali. He also met with representatives of the Sahrawi people and members of Sahrawi civil society, who unanimously reiterated the attachment of the Sahrawi people to their inalienable right to self-determination and to the recovery of freedom and independence.
During the official reception held for Staffan de Mistura, at the headquarters of the Sahrawi presidency, Brahim Ghali reiterated the “attachment of the Polisario Front to the legitimate demands of the Sahrawi people and its determination to continue the struggle until securing independence.”
In a media statement following the meeting between Ghali and De Mistura, the representative of the Polisario Front to the UN and coordinator with the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), Mohamed Sidi Omar, stressed that “the discussion during this meeting focused on the current situation and prospects of the UN-sponsored peace process in Western Sahara,” which has been under Moroccan occupation since 1975.
He further noted: “During this meeting, President Ghali expressed the attachment of the Sahrawi people to their inalienable and non-negotiable right to self-determination and independence, and their commitment to work and cooperate with the United Nations and the African Union (AU) to achieve a just and lasting solution to the question of Western Sahara, which remains on the United Nations agenda as a decolonization question.”
Sidi Omar underscored that the visit of the personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General “is part of a tour that has led him to the region to meet the two parties to the conflict, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro and the Moroccan occupation state, to discuss the current situation and present it as part of the briefing he will give to the Security Council on April 14.”
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