THE 2010 CCDH/IER REPORT: A PARTIAL AND INSUFFICIENT ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This is the story of an official report by the Moroccan state published in 2010. It is a document from the Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH) detailing the results of the Equity and Reconciliation Instance (IER) on enforced disappearances. Its very existence marks a historic milestone: for the first time, Morocco formally acknowledges its responsibility for grave human rights violations — disappearances, torture, deaths in custody — committed between 1956 and 1999.

Focusing exclusively on the rights of Sahrawi victims, AFAPREDESA analyzes its content in light of the applicable international law on enforced disappearance, consolidated by the adoption in 2006 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPED).

I. What the State Acknowledges: Decrypting the CCDH Report

Delving into the report, we find an official narrative that confirms what was denied for decades. The report details the fate of hundreds of Sahrawis in the context of the post-1975 occupation:

• Mention of 144 deaths in armed clashes — often buried where they fell, with no known name or grave — which it categorizes as “war casualties.”
• It details the deaths of 90 people in secret detention centers like Agdz and Kelâat M’Gouna, and 115 others in military barracks in the occupied Sahara. Among these numbers are 14 children and 11 women, and it cites causes such as torture, untreated diseases, and inhumane conditions.
• It records deaths in the El Aaiún civil prison, in special forces barracks, and the execution of 13 Sahrawis in 1976.
• Finally, it acknowledges the “long disappearances” of hundreds of people, including women and children, in these same secret centers, many of whom were released in 1991.

In total: the Moroccan State admits its responsibility for the death or “clarified” disappearance of 638 Sahrawis — representing 68% of all victims acknowledged by Morocco between 1956 and 1999.

II. To What Extent Does This Acknowledgment Meet the Demands for Truth and Justice?

Partiality and Lack of Credibility

The report is limited to the cases that the IER claims to have “clarified,” without presenting conclusive evidence. The exhumation of mass graves in Fadret Leguiaa (2013) by Spanish forensic experts (from the University of the Basque Country, led by Francisco Etxeberria) contradicts several assertions: the CCDH/IER maintained that 4 of the 8 bodies found had died in a military barracks in Smara, when in reality they were arrested by a Moroccan military patrol in February 1976 and executed on February 12, 1976, in Fadret Leguiaa (approximately 80 km from Smara). This seriously undermines the credibility of the Moroccan institutions.

Structural Impunity

Enforced disappearances were not isolated abuses, but a deliberate state policy, coordinated among the police, army, gendarmerie, territorial administration, and other security structures. The report acknowledges the general responsibility of the State, but does not name any individual perpetrators. The IER’s mandate explicitly excluded judicial proceedings.

Torture, Horror, and Inhumanity

The report describes a system of secret detention centers with inhuman conditions: overcrowding, isolation, denial of medical care, physical and psychological torture, deaths of infants, and unrecognizable bodies. The remains were clandestinely buried without identification or information provided to the families.

III. The Verdict of International Law

International jurisprudence (from the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights) is unanimous: enforced disappearance is a continuous (or permanent) crime until the full truth is established, the victim’s fate is revealed, the remains are returned, and those responsible are prosecuted. When it is massive and systematic — as in the case against the Sahrawi people within the framework of a policy of occupation and repression — it constitutes a crime against humanity (Art. 5 of the 2006 Convention, Rome Statute of the ICC).

In the Sahrawi case, these violations were widespread and systematic against a civilian population due to their national/ethnic identity, aimed at preventing self-determination and consolidating control over an occupied territory (classified as such by the UN since Resolution 34/37 of 1979).

The indictment order of April 9, 2015 (Case 1/2015, ROJ: AAN 56/2015) by Judge Pablo Ruz of Spain’s Audiencia Nacional includes sufficient elements to prosecute eleven high-ranking Moroccan officials for genocide (in conjunction with enforced disappearances, torture, murders, and illegal detentions) between 1975 and 1991, as part of a “systematic attack” against the Sahrawi people with the intent to destroy it in whole or in part and to appropriate the territory of Western Sahara.

What International Law Requires	What the 2010 CCDH Report Shows	Persistent Deficiencies
Prevent and prosecute the ongoing crime	Historical acknowledgment, but no criminal action	No criminal justice. Structural impunity. No perpetrators prosecuted.
Investigate exhaustively and impartially	The IER conducted a partial investigation without revealing the full truth	The investigation excludes a large number of Sahrawi victims, discriminates against the most affected group, and denies the occupation context.
Guarantee the right to the truth	Incomplete lists and partial acknowledgment of 144 unnamed Sahrawi victims	The truth is partial. The key context is omitted: violations in occupied territory (UN).
Provide integral reparation (justice, truth, compensation, guarantees of non-repetition)	Limited and discriminatory economic compensations	Prohibition on naming perpetrators. No restitution of Sahrawi remains. No collective reparation (self-determination). No guarantees of non-repetition (occupation and repression persist).

IV. A Historic Progress… but Profoundly Insufficient

The 2010 CCDH report undoubtedly represents progress: it breaks, for the first time, the official silence of the State regarding grave violations during the “years of lead,” including in occupied Western Sahara. It acknowledges enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and torture, and allows partial historical recognition (638 Sahrawis, including 144 unnamed victims) as well as limited economic compensations.

However, this progress is profoundly insufficient and fails to meet the imperative demands of modern international law. It evades the occupation context (UN), omits the massive and systematic dimension against the Sahrawi people as an ethnic/national group, and maintains total structural impunity: no perpetrators prosecuted, partial and discriminatory truth (the IER limited Sahrawi cases, denying the link to the repression of self-determination).

The outstanding international debts remain immense: full truth, criminal justice without prescription or amnesty, integral reparation (individual and collective), and effective guarantees of non-repetition.

As long as these international obligations are not fully met, the 2010 CCDH report, despite its historic nature, can only be considered a partial and incomplete stage.

The persistence of the occupation, repression, and impunity keeps enforced disappearance as a living crime, demanding a comprehensive, just, and prompt response from the international community.