In this video, recorded 28 september 2009, the former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, claims that there is currently no plunder of Western Sahara - since there is "no economic activity" taking place there. He also claims that the area used to be part of Morocco before the occupation in 1975.
At the UN Fourth Committee on Decolonization held in New York on 6-12 October, WSRW called for the United Nations to send a Mission of Observation to Western Sahara, to monitor the natural resource exploitation from the territory.
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund has invested billions of Norwegian kroners in companies that participate in the plunder of Western Sahara. An examination carried out by Norwatch shows that Pension Fund companies are behind two-thirds of all phosphate purchases in the occupied country. Norwatch, 06 October 2009.
2 vessels, one Spanish and one Cape Verdean, have been detained by the Moroccan coastguard after illegal fishing in Western Sahara.
A research fellow attached to the Norwegian Geological Survey has been working on an oil research project in the occupied Western Sahara. Western Sahara Resource Watch requests that a scientific geological journal temporarily suspend further publication of her research data. The research institute is itself sceptical of the research project.
The Norwegian seismic company Fugro-Geoteam has completed its controversial exploration offshore occupied Western Sahara. Their employer’s plans to become established on the Canary Islands have aroused strong reactions. Norwatch, 15 April 2009.
On 8th April 2008, Polisario sent a letter to the Security Council protesting the plundering of Western Sahara. The letter has now been published as an official document of both the General Assembly (A/63/871) and the Security Council (S/2009/198).
France Libertés: Fondation Danielle Mitterrand - an NGO with special consultative status in the Human Rights Council - has submitted a written statement to the council denouncing the plundering of Western Sahara.
For a few days more you will still find tomatoes from occupied Western Sahara on the vegetable counters of the Norwegian grocery store Coop. On Wednesday they stopped the controversial import. Norwatch, 11 March 2009.
"WSRW believes it is time for the Saharawi people to settle the question of how they wish to be governed through the referendum which the UN calls for. Then it will be clear to companies with whom to deal", writes WSRW in letters to the editor in the petroleum journals Upstream and Petroleum Africa.
Madeira has constructed a second artificial beach. Just as before, the sand is originating from occupied Western Sahara.
Communiqué on the Conference on Multilateralism and International Law with Western Sahara as case study Hosted by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs and the University of Pretoria, 4 and 5 December 2008.
See more details about the conference itself here.
No less than 426 organisations signed a petition letter, demanding from the EU Commission that occupied Western Sahara be kept clearly outside of the so- called Advanced Status cooperation that Morocco currently is being granted. The petition was sent to the EU Commission this morning. PRESS RELEASE.
German former MEP, and former leader of the Western Sahara solidarity network at the European Parliament, Margot Keßler, has this week sent a letter to the Belgian branch of the German chemical company BASF. In the letter, Mrs. Keßler asks for a clarification on a series of questions regarding BASF's imports of phosphates from occupied Western Sahara.