 |
 |
 |
Dire political developments in Algeria and overshadowing events in the world since 1991 have affected the flow and reliability of vital aid to the refugee camps. The OAU–UN Settlement Plan and the uncertainty of its outcome have also had a negative impact. Humanitarian agencies have been reluctant to commit any substantial long-term aid for badly needed development projects because of the possibility that the Saharawis would be returning home. Significantly, as the Polisario could no longer rely on Algeria for the bulk of aid—it had its own economic crisis—it had to turn mostly to Europe for the survival needs of the refugees. This presented an opportunity for Morocco to influence European sources and politicize a humanitarian reality.
Indeed, food aid has been precarious over the past decade, and malnutrition has skyrocketed. In 2002, the WFP claimed that the refugees faced the prospects of obtaining only 11 per cent of their daily nutritional requirements; and a study showed that 35 per cent of the children suffered from chronic malnutrition, while 13 per cent were acutely malnourished. Stunting of children’s growth was widespread. The special needs of pregnant and lactating mothers were also severely affected. As an example of a protracted refugee situation, the Saharawis are susceptible to being overlooked by the international community, and the budgets for vital food programs like WFP, UNHCR, and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) have been subject to slashes at a time when the population is growing. The alarm bells in early 2004 were finally heard, and food aid has been boosted temporarily.
For those Saharawi refugees with financial means, food shortages have been supplemented by burgeoning markets in the camps. This is a relatively new phenomenon. All kinds of small shops and services are available, and making money has become a driving force. The downside, of course, is that a gap is emerging between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in a way that was not evident before. Until the early 1990s, there was no economy and no circulation of money in the camps. Affairs were conducted on an exchange basis: the refugees received their essential food and housing needs through the Polisario, and had access to free education and health care. In return, they worked without salary according to their capacity in the various sectors of camp life. With the need to prepare for independence, however, it has become important to reintroduce and develop an economic system, albeit a limited one.
Websites: |
The repatriation of the Saharawi refugees to Western Sahara to vote in the referendum has been amongst the sticking points of the OAU–UN Settlement Plan. The main concern for the refugees has been their security in the territory. Anxiety stems from the large military presence (some 65,000 members of the security services ) that would continue to exist during the voting period, as well as from the history of Morocco’s repression against the indigenous population. Ideas to repatriate the refugees initially to the liberated zone have also been problematic. Firstly, there is a very limited infrastructure, and the logistics of providing food and water for over 129,000—the number of refugees pre-registered for repatriation—would be a huge burden on Polisario resources. The refugees would also be within striking distance of the Moroccan troops behind the defensive wall. Indeed, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the implementation of the cease-fire in 1991, Moroccan troops and planes bombed sites in the liberated zone, where the Polisario had built schools and a hospital in preparation for the referendum.
On a chronic and pervasive level, the question of landmines remains an endemic obstacle to repatriation. After years of colonial and post-colonial conflict, mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) litter the territory. The UNHCR estimates there may be up to 10 million landmines in Western Sahara. The most mine-affected area is thought to extend 10 km east of the berms; and the location of UXO, found throughout the whole of Western Sahara, is largely unknown. To complicate matters more, the desert conditions of sand, wind, and occasional heavy rain make mine-shifting a constant phenomenon.
The scale of the problem is huge, and MINURSO have not had the adequate funding, expertise, or equipment to tackle the situation effectively. The uncertainty of the political process has affected efforts too. For a brief period, after Baker revived the Settlement Plan in 1997, there was a small flurry of mine clearance and mine-awareness projects initiated in Western Sahara and the refugee camps. Norwegian Peoples Aid provided mine-awareness education for some 90,000 Saharawi refugees over two years, and the Swedish Demining Unit did a two-and-a-half month stint with MINURSO. Morocco and the Polisario also agreed, in 1999, to fully co-operate with MINURSO to provide all available data on mines and assist in addressing the situation, including mine-disposal operations. The non-governmental Saharawi Campaign to Ban Mines (SCABAM) was established in early 2000 to monitor and document the situation.
Initiatives so far have fallen way short of requirements, yet no further landmine-related activities by NGOs have been pursued since 2000. The Global Landmine Survey initiative (a group of mine action-related NGOs and the UN Mine Action Service), which deemed Western Sahara a top priority to survey, never followed up on a preliminary visit made in 1999. Under the present circumstances, the repatriation of Saharawi refugees remains highly risky, if not improbable. The UNHCR have clearly indicated that without proper prior mine clearance it would be impossible to run a smooth repatriation operation.
Website:International Campaign to Ban Landmines - http://www.icbl.org |
Compared to the size of the Saharawi refugee population, the communities in exile are small. The most significant ones are in Mauritania, the Canary Islands, and mainland Spain. A tiny community has historically also existed in and around Tindouf in Algeria.
The communities in Spain and the Canaries are highly unstable. Many of the Saharawis there are either studying or earning some money to support family in the camps or OT. Since the mid-1990s, in particular, a relatively steady influx of Saharawis has been going from the refugee camps to seek work in Spain. In a very rough manner it is possible to say that a higher proportion of Saharawis in the Canary Islands are from the OT, due to its proximity.
Apart from those Saharawis who have escaped the OT for human rights reasons and have sought asylum, few migrate with the intention of settling down permanently. Due to strong cultural and historical links, the community in Mauritania is the most permanent one. There is also a sizeable community of Saharawis in southern Morocco in the Tarfaya region, which was once part of Western Sahara. Numbers for the size of the different exiled communities again are very difficult to determine. Polisario sources involved with maintaining contact with the exiled Saharawis estimate that the largest community is Mauritania.
For more than two decades of Morocco’s occupation in Western Sahara, there was no room for the existence of a Saharawi civil society. Towards the end of the 1990s, however, two key events helped create the conditions for the fragile, tentative beginnings of one: the assumption of a new Moroccan king to the throne and a mini-Saharawi intifada at the end of 1999 in La-Ayoune. A small core of Saharawis that set out to protest peacefully against the economic conditions turned, to everyone’s surprise, into a movement of unprecedented scale and breadth. Saharawi groups representing a wide spectrum of interests came together, somewhat spontaneously, to confront the Moroccan authorities. Initially a group of activists amongst ex-political prisoners, it grew to include groups representing the unemployed, ex-miners, Saharawis seeking compensation for destruction of property and livelihood, etc.
Widespread arrests, reports of torture, and prison sentences followed.
Significantly, in 1999, the Sahara section of the Forum for Justice and Truth was also legally established. For a few years the Saharawi activists campaigned with relative openness and made contact with numerous outsiders and human rights organizations like AI. The Moroccan authorities, however, became increasingly nervous about the political impact of the Saharan branch and closed it down in 2003, on the grounds that it was a front for the Polisario and other subversive foreign elements. It is broadly believed that following two more Saharawi uprisings in Smara and Al-Ayoune in 2001, the authorities were overly alarmed at the growing boldness of the Saharawi population and saw the activities of the Forum members as central to this trend.
The remaining various Saharawi civil groups do not enjoy official recognition from the Moroccan authorities, but their existence is nevertheless an important historical development. The terror of the first decade or so of the Moroccan occupation largely stamped out any visible Saharawi resistance, and the notion of a Saharawi civil society was almost impossible to conceive. These civil groups, however, do not have any legal protection and can be targeted at any time under any pretext.
Saharawi activists in the OT claim that many Saharawi youth who have dropped out of the educational system and have few prospects of employment are often encouraged by Moroccan agents to turn to drugs and drink, or are lured into petty crime. They assert this is an insidious method for rendering them politically inactive. On the other hand, Saharawis who manage to go on to tertiary education and attend Moroccan universities are often regarded by the authorities as potential political liabilities. Indeed, Saharawi university students and even secondary students have become more politicized over the past few years. Around forty Saharawi university students sparked off the development of large-scale peaceful protests in El-Ayoune in 1999. They have also increasingly played an important role in linking up Saharawi activists with supportive Moroccan elements in the society and media. The fact that they are dispersed within Morocco and are few in number makes them vulnerable to harassment and worse.
|
|
|