Chahid El Hafed, 30 January 2026
The Association of Families of Sahrawi Prisoners and Disappeared (AFAPREDESA) expresses its most energetic rejection and profound disappointment at the position adopted by the European Union in the joint declaration issued on 29 January 2026, following the 15th EU-Morocco Association Council.
*EU-Morocco Joint Declaration of 29 January 2026:
With this declaration, the European Union takes a further step in its capitulation to the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, aligning itself de facto with Rabat’s expansionist and colonial theses. Under calibrated diplomatic language, it empties of content the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, a principle unequivocally enshrined in United Nations General Assembly resolutions on Western Sahara since 1963. All of them reaffirm the full validity of Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960, which declares the need to end colonialism in all its forms and consecrates the right of colonial and oppressed peoples to self-determination and independence.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest judicial body, established in its advisory opinion of 16 October 1975 that there are no ties of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco. The Court concluded that there were no elements justifying any limitation on the full application of the principle of self-determination for the Sahrawi people, in strict conformity with Resolution 1514 (XV) and international decolonization norms.
The EU insists on the need for a “mutually acceptable solution” and even states that such a solution must guarantee the “self-determination” of the Sahrawi people, but immediately subordinates it to a single basis: the autonomy plan proposed unilaterally by Morocco. In this framework, what real space remains for independence, an option explicitly contemplated in UN resolutions and at the very core of the principle of self-determination? What the EU presents as the “most viable solution” is nothing but the de facto legitimization of an illegal occupation and annexation, practices prohibited by international humanitarian and customary law, whether in Ukraine, Palestine, Greenland, Kanaky, Western Sahara, or any other non-self-governing territory.
Demanding negotiations “without preconditions” while imposing the Spurious Moroccan plan as the only basis constitutes, in itself, the gravest and most flagrant contradiction. It is tantamount to asking the Sahrawi people to negotiate their own surrender after decades of resistance and sacrifice for the respect of the international law that governs the coexistence of all peoples and nations.
International legality admits no exceptions or à la carte menus. The rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union have been clear and incontrovertible: no agreement between the EU and Morocco can be extended to Western Sahara without the express consent of the Sahrawi people, legitimately represented by the Polisario Front. This political declaration aims precisely to circumvent these judicial decisions and shield the systematic plundering of Sahrawi natural resources, which sustains the occupation and aggravates persistent and grave human rights violations in the territory.
The European Union cannot invoke the principles of international law in some cases and disregard them in others. We demand consistency with its own legal framework, which, under Articles 3 and 21 of the Treaty on European Union, commits it to respecting and developing international law in its external action. This obligation must translate into the same firmness in the face of the occupation of Western Sahara, Africa’s last non-self-governing territory, as that demonstrated in other scenarios of flagrant violations.
AFAPREDESA issues an urgent appeal to the United Nations, the ultimate repository of responsibility for Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory under its authority: the Organization can neither endorse processes that distort the very essence of the right to self-determination, nor depart from its original mandate established under the Settlement Plan which created the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).
The Sahrawi people continue their legitimate struggle for justice, freedom, permanent sovereignty over their natural resources, and full respect for their human rights. The Kingdom of Morocco has only the duty to immediately end its illegal occupation. The European Union’s duty is to cease being complicit in that occupation and in the plunder of Sahrawi resources. History will not absolve those who, for geopolitical or short-term economic interests, make pacts with the occupier and betray the founding principles of international law, the United Nations Charter, and the EU’s own values and principles.
Western Sahara is Not for Sale