Several NGOs called on Thursday in Geneva for the international community to pressure Algeria to guarantee the fundamental rights of the populations detained in the Tindouf camps.
This appeal was made during the general debate on the annual report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in the world, on the occasion of the 57th ordinary session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), held in Geneva under the presidency of Morocco.
During the interactive debate, which was open to civil society, the NGOs warned of the “alarming” humanitarian conditions in the Tindouf camps, where the populations suffer “serious violations” of their most basic rights, as well as the “systematic” misappropriation of aid by the Polisario leadership “with the connivance of the Algerian army, which has besieged the camps to prevent any exits.”
Their interventions, interspersed with poignant testimonies, highlighted in particular the repression campaigns against young people who dare, at the risk of their lives, to denounce these actions on social networks, citing the numerous cases of kidnapping, arbitrary disappearance, and torture, in addition to the crying lack of food.
In these conditions, some of them have no choice but to join “armed groups in the Sahel” to feed their families and support themselves, deplored the NGOs, which include the African Network for the Development of Governance and Human Rights and the International Committee for the Respect and Application of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
“We call on the international community to put pressure on Algeria to fully comply with its international obligations as host country and to guarantee the protection of the populations detained in the Tindouf camps,” the NGOs insisted, demanding to put an end to the exactions and to open judicial investigations into the matter.
They also denounced enforced disappearances in the Tindouf camps, stressing that the separatists resort to disappearances and other abuses to silence and intimidate the population.
The annual report on the situation of human rights in the world is the subject of a general debate during the 57th ordinary session of the HRC, which runs until 11 October and is chaired by Ambassador Omar Zniber, Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva and current President of the HRC for 2024.
MAP: 13 September 2024
