Conference in Paris on “EU and natural resources in Western Sahara”

A conference under the theme “The European Union and natural resources in Western Sahara: Human rights and geopolitics of the environment,” was organized at “Paris 5” university as part of a series of academic seminars organized by the French academic observatory on the issue of Western Sahara.

The conference was led by the Polisario Front’s lawyer to the European Court Gilles Devers, by Mary Verizon from the observatory of natural resources in Western Sahara and Sahrawi poet Ali Salem Isselmou, said Wednesday the Sahrawi news agency SPS.

Devers reviewed the issue of natural resources in the historical and legal context of the conflict in Western Sahara, giving a detailed presentation on “the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 10 December 2015, the appeal process of some European countries and possible prospects in anticipation of the final decision which must be made public before the end of the year.”

For her part, Vierzon presented an exhaustive report on the illicit plundering of the Sahrawi natural resources by Morocco and some international partners, underlining that the recent floods in the occupied cities of Western Sahara, notably the occupied city al-Ayun “show the fragility of infrastructures and that the income from these resources has never been invested in Western Sahara.”

The conference was also marked by the participation of Professor Sebastian Polay of the French academic observatory on Western Sahara and members of the solidarity movement with the Sahrawi people in France, students, researchers and representatives of the Sahrawi community in France.