Western Sahara territory, "not free" where democratic liberties are not respected

WASHINGTON- Western Sahara has been classified as a "non-free" territory where the respect for political and civic rights has declined significantly in 2016, according to a report by the US NGO, Freedom House, issued Tuesday in Washington.

In 2016, the occupied Western Sahara experienced a marked degradation in the respect for democratic freedoms with a score of 4 points out of 100, the world’s worse score after Tibet, according to this report.

The Freedom House Foundation considered Western Sahara as occupied territories, whose final status remains to be determined.

The ranking is very much in line with the position of the US State Department which had maintained the occupied Sahrawi territories in the list of dependencies at the end of 2016, whose "sovereignty remains to be determined".

The report of the US NGO includes 14 occupied or disputed territories with no defined status and 195 independent countries.