At the Security Council, countries call on Morocco to authorize UN visits to Sahara

At the UN Security Council, several countries urged Morocco to allow the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to resume visits to the Sahara. «The Council has intensified its call for enhancing cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR). We are confident there is broad support in this room for OHCHR’s critical work and strongly urge every effort to facilitate its mission», emphasized the U.S. representative in an address.

«We are convinced that OHCHR must have unhindered access to this territory», added Slovenia's representative. Similar calls were echoed by the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

In his 2024 report on the situation in the Sahara, the UN Secretary-General noted that «the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been unable to visit Western Sahara for the ninth consecutive year, despite multiple official requests and the Security Council’s call for enhanced cooperation, including through such visits, in its resolution 2703 (2023)».

Guterres lamented that «the lack of access to first-hand information and independent, impartial, comprehensive, and sustained monitoring of the human rights situation continues to hinder a full assessment of the region’s human rights situation».

For the record, the last visit by an OHCHR technical mission to the Sahara took place in 2015.