Since it was built in the early eighties, the Wall of Moroccan Occupation in Western Sahara, which is infested with over 7 million landmines, still poses a great danger to Sahrawi civilian population on both sides of the wall, despite the ongoing UN-supervised ceasefire in Western Sahara, which came into effect on 6 September 1991. In addition to its enduring humanitarian, social, economic, political, legal and environmental effects, the wall (known as the Wall of Shame) also represents a persistent crime against the human rights of the Sahrawi people and a major impediment to the realisation of their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
It is for this reason that the Sahrawi authorities have spared no effort to denounce the Moroccan wall before the international public opinion and to draw attention to this gigantic military apparatus that continues to play a decisive role in the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. In addition, in recent years, various Sahrawi civil society organisations and many components of the international solidarity movement have carried out a great number of political, humanitarian, cultural and artistic campaigns in order to denounce the wall and to raise public awareness of its multiple negative impacts.
In this context, the 38th Conference of the European Coordination of Support to the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO) held in Rome, Italy, from 15 to 16 November 2013, adopted a decision regarding the launching of an international campaign against the Moroccan wall in Western Sahara. The campaign is called: “The International Campaign against the Wall of Moroccan Occupation in Western Sahara: together to remove the wall”, and is based on three main pillars: the wall, mines and mine victims.
To read the full text of the EUCOCO declaration, click here.