Laayoune – Several actors of civil society in the southern Moroccan city of Laayoune denounced Saturday the bias found in some members of the Robert Kennedy Foundation for Justice and Human Rights for the enemies of the Kingdom’s territorial integrity with which they held meetings, totally ignoring the other components of civil society in the city and representatives of the local population.
According to these stakeholders, members of the Foundation, arrived Friday in Laayoune and who plan a visit to the southern provinces of the Kingdom and the Tindouf camps (Algeria’s south-west) to inquire about the situation of human rights, should, as representatives of an institution that says to be academic, to invite to their meetings all components of civil society, without any “selective approach.”
They told MAP news agency that “family organization, funded by Algeria, is invested with a mission to back the polisario diplomacy, through the development of a partial report on human rights situation in the Sahara and in the Tindouf camps.”
The Independent Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in the Sahara (CIDDHS) has decided to boycott the meetings of the delegation of the Robert Kennedy Foundation, led by Kerry Kennedy and Mary Lawlaor, “in order to, allegedly, operate an assessment of the situation of human rights in the Sahara and in the Tindouf camps.”
The decision to boycott occurs, according to the members of the CIDDHS, due to “the blatant bias and prejudices of some members of the Foundation, who chose to side with one camp and adopt a unilateral vision of the situation on the ground, far from objectivity.”
For its part, the League of human rights advocates in the Sahara expressed “deep concern” about the course of the visit to Laayoune of members of this Foundation, “which follow a predetermined and biased agenda in break with the principles of democracy and human rights, thereby depriving its report from any credibility.”
”That is why the League refuses to cooperate with the organization, which undermines the gains made in the field of human rights in the southern provinces.”
