Morocco blasts HRW’s ‘desperate’ attempt to undermine diplomatic successes

RABAT - Moroccan authorities condemned on Friday Human Rights Watch's “desperate” attempt to undermine all the diplomatic successes Morocco has achieved to strengthen its territorial integrity.

The ministerial delegation for human rights lashed out at the New York-based rights group’s open exploitation of the human rights file to “pass its political positions on the Moroccan Sahara and fabricate false accusations” against public authorities.

The ministry delegation said that Moroccan authorities learned of the release of HRW’s statement on December 18, 2020 adopting and promoting a political discourse hostile to Morocco’s territorial integrity and the positive developments that it has recently witnessed.

“This organisation resorted as usual to malicious allegations in its statement that are not based on any real facts in an attempt to convey a human rights character to its discourse, dealing a blow to a universally accepted methodology regarding the norms of impartiality and objectivity regulating the work of international non-governmental organisations working in the field of human rights,” said the ministry delegation in a statement.

Rabat said that Moroccan authorities utterly reject HRW’s adoption of the thesis of the anti-Moroccan parties regarding the peaceful and legitimate intervention to reopen the road linking Morocco and Mauritania in the "Guerguerat" region after exhausting all efforts, including the repeated calls of the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres to intervene in the buffer zone and the Security Council’s resolutions to guarantee the freedom of movement of people and goods through this corridor.

The delegation stressed that Moroccan armed forces’ peaceful and balanced intervention to reopen this vital road linking the European and African continents for centuries won the international community’s absolute support.

"What reaffirms the political aspect of the organisation's press release is its meddling in bilateral relations between countries and their sovereign decisions," said the statement, adding that the US recognition of the Moroccanness of the Sahara constitutes an extension of its continuous support for the Moroccan autonomy initiative which was submitted to the UN in 2007 and described by the Security Council as a serious and credible proposal. 

US President Donald Trump announced on December 10 that the United States would recognize Morocco's claim over Western Sahara

Trump noted that Morocco had been the first country to recognize the US as an independent nation just a year after the US declared its independence from Britain in 1776.

On December 15, US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft sent a copy of Trump's proclamation recognizing "that the entire Western Sahara territory is part of the Kingdom of Morocco" to Guterres and the Security Council.

“HRW's systematic attacks against Morocco, which the Moroccan authorities refuse, pushed the organisation into the trap of presenting distorted facts,” said the delegation’s statement.

“HRW should have condemned, at least, the exploitation of children for political reasons by the separatists instead of accusing Moroccan authorities which intervened to apply the law and protect them against such abuse," it said.

“This NGO ignored, at the same time, the campaign to recruit children in Tindouf camps and their use to call for war and stir hatred, in addition to its vile interpretation of the precautionary health measures adopted by the Moroccan authorities to fight the pandemic and shield the right to life and to health,” it added.

The delegation also described, as an attempt to spread falsehood, the HRW's call to entrust MINURSO with the prerogative of monitoring the human rights situation in the Kingdom's southern provinces under the pretext that similar missions in the world have this competence.

“Only seven out of 14 peacekeeping missions in the world have the prerogative of monitoring the human rights situation in conflict countries or regions known for crimes falling within the framework of International Humanitarian Law and not International Human Rights Law,” the statement explained.

The Ministerial delegation for human rights concluded that monitoring the human rights situation in the southern provinces is entrusted to the National Human Rights Council (CNDH) as an independent constitutional body.

It recalled that the Security Council repeatedly commended, in its resolutions, the role of CNDH's regional commissions, the latest of which is resolution 2548 dated October 2020.