UN: Western Sahara refugees forgotten

'Not enough has been done'

UN refugee agency head: 'international community should wake up' to help Western Saharans.

By Pierre-Yves Julien - TINDOUF

The head of the UN refugee agency Antonio Guterres said Thursday that the international community had forgotten Western Sahara's refugees, at the end of a visit to their desert camps.
"I recognise that not enough has been done and that the international community should wake up," he said, adding that "we have to work more and better" for the 165,000 refugees in the Tindouf camp complex.
"These refugees are living for tens of years in precarious conditions. With this visit I want to better know their needs in order to be able to bring them more aid in the most effective way possible," Guterres said as he wrapped up a two-day visit to Tindouf, 1,800 kilometres south of the capital Algiers.
Guterres is the first head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to visit the camps since 1976, shortly after they were created to cope with the refugees when the former Spanish colony was annexed by Morocco in 1975.
Morocco claims historical sovereignty over the colony and has proposed a plan for broad self-government, but no independence.
The armed Polisario Front, supported by neighbouring Algeria, is demanding independence for the territory and a referendum on self-determination.
"I do not have a political mandate," said Guterres during his visit, "but the solution cannot be other than political."
Several rounds of talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front in Manhasset near New York failed to achieve a breakthrough and a fresh series of negotiations began under UN auspices in Durnstein near Vienna on August 10 to try to break the deadlock.
The new UN special envoy to the Western Sahara, Christopher Ross said that another round of talks would go ahead "as soon as possible" at a place and time to be specified.
Representatives from Algeria, which backs the Polisario Front, and from Mauritania, which lies south of the Western Sahara and briefly controlled part of it before Morocco annexed the whole territory, attended the talks.
Polisario secretary general Mohamed Abdelaziz welcomed Guterres' visit as another sign of "a change, a new vitality that we have noted on the part of the UNHCR."
The visit contributes to a favourable ambiance for the negotiations to continue," he added.
Meanwhile, Guterres committed the UNHCR to improving conditions for the camps' inhabitants.
He described "the necessity to increase aid to health and education" as priorities, but also said work needed to be done to improve simple everyday conditions like access to water.
At the end of July, the UN released 1.5 million dollars in emergency intervention funds to strengthen its humanitarian assistance programme on which nearly all the refugees depend.
The UNHCR recently launched an appeal for around 6 million dollars to boost aid to the refugees but only 44 percent, some 2.6 million, had been forthcoming from donor countries by the end of july, said a UN source.
Guterres was due to leave for talks in Morocco later Thursday.