President Brahim Ghali holds a meeting with Staffan de Mistura

New York (United Nations), September 12, 2023 (SPS) - The President of the Sahrawi Republic and Secretary-General of the Polisario Front, Mr. Brahim Ghali, held a meeting on Monday with the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to Western Sahara Mr. Staffan de Mistura.

The meeting discussed the latest developments in the United Nations-sponsored peace process to decolonize Western Sahara, focusing on the efforts of the Personal Envoy, especially the recent visit that led him to the occupied territories of the Sahrawi Republic.

Mr. de Mistura gave a presentation about his visit to the occupied cities of Laayoune and Dakhla, a visit that took place recently after two years of waiting due to the obstruction imposed by the Moroccan occupation state.

The Personal Envoy expressed his determination to continue his efforts and contacts to advance the peace process in Western Sahara, in the context of implementing United Nations resolutions, in order to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination.

The President of the Republic and the Secretary-General of the Polisario Front stressed, for his part, that the visit of the Personal Envoy to Western Sahara is “normal”, as it is at the core of his mission and the responsibility of the United Nations, and should not be an end in itself nor be a favor from the Moroccan occupying state.

The President of the Republic also recalled the severe siege and brutal repression that accompanied this visit against innocent Sahrawi civilians, preventing them from exercising their right to demonstrate peacefully to express their positions and even depriving some of them of the opportunity to meet the personal envoy.

The President of the Republic and the Secretary-General of the Front stressed the need for the United Nations to assume its responsibility, ensure compliance with international law and international humanitarian law in Western Sahara, protect defenseless Sahrawi citizens, stop the grave violations committed against them by the Moroccan occupying state, put an end to its plunder of Sahrawi natural resources, and immediately release all Sahrawi civilian prisoners of war in Moroccan prisons.

After expressing the readiness of the Sahrawi party to cooperate with the efforts of the United Nations to decolonize the last colony in Africa, the President of the Republic, the Secretary-General of the Polisario Front, concluded by affirming that the Sahrawi people remain strongly committed to defending their national rights and aspirations by all legitimate means guaranteed by the Charter of the United Nations and the Constitutive Act of the African Union.

SPS 110/T