When the vessels come in with too much fish to El Aaiun harbour, the surplus is trown away at a waste dump nearby. New and fresh images show tonnes of fish dumped onshore.
On Sunday 17 November, dozens of Saharawis took to the streets of El Aaiun to protest against the involvement of Total, Siemens and the EU in the illegal exploitation of their occupied country's natural resources.
The Swiss supermarket chain Coop in October started labelling their tomatoes from "Western Sahara".
Saharawi student asked Morocan state phosphate company how her people benefits from the plunder. OCP now tries to silence the stunt, by preventing it from being aired on Youtube.
YEPP, the youth section of the EU parliament's conservative platform EPP, has asked the EU to not enter into deals with Morocco that also covers natural resources from the annexed Western Sahara. WSRW was just made aware of this text, originally adopted in YEPP congress in May.
The European Parliament's new legal opinion states that Morocco has never claimed an Exclusive Economic Zone over the waters off Western Sahara. Read the full text of the opinion here.
The EU Member States did not come to a decision on the proposed EU-Morocco Fisheries Protocol today. The vote will be postponed a few days.
The Tasmanian based fertilizer producer Impact has stopped its imports from Western Sahara.
An impact assessment ordered by the EU Commission on the effects of the envisioned EU-Morocco DCFTA confirms that Western Sahara is part of the deal's scope. But the people with the sovereign rights to the land, the Saharawis, will not even be heard as a stakeholder to the process.
Agrium Inc, a Canadian agro-business, is expecting its first shipment of phosphate rock from occupied Western Sahara by the end of the month. The matter has attracted media attention in Canada, stating that "it could be the first import of conflict minerals coming directly into Canada since the apartheid era in South Africa".
In its statement to the United Nations’ Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee), Western Sahara Resource Watch drew attention to companies trading in phosphate rock from occupied Western Sahara and Groupe Total's unethical seabed oil exploration in the adjacent waters.
The EU-Commission’s newly proposed and controversial Fisheries Partnership Agreement (FPA) with Morocco has failed to gain support from the Danish Government and a broad majority in the Danish Parliament.