The fish stocks offshore Western Sahara do not belong to Morocco. In fact, Morocco’s claims to Western Sahara have been rejected by the International Court of Justice, and are not recognised by the UN. The resources of Western Sahara belong to its people, the Sahrawis.
When the EU pays Morocco 144 million euros to fish in Western Sahara, they give money to an illegal occupying power to take out the resources of the territory, in the disregard of the wishes of the resources’ legitimate owners. The EU basically steals the natural resources away from under the nose of the Sahrawis.
The humanitarian situation for the Sahrawis is acute. A majority of the Sahrawi people fled their homeland in 1975, when Morocco ignored the opinion of the International Court of Justice, invaded Western Sahara to the UN’s condemnation, and bombed the Sahrawi settlements in Western Sahara with napalm and white phosphorus.
Since then, the Sahrawis have suffered from over 3 decades of exile and occupation.
The Sahrawi people living in the refugee camps in Algeria suffer from donor fatigue and malnutrition. A study from 2008 establishes that 1 in every 5 Sahrawi child is malnourished. That is worse than what the UN establishes as being “an acute crisis”.
In the occupied territories, any person being critical to the illegal Moroccan presence, will risk being subjected to human rights violations. This has been documented, year after year, by leading international human rights organisations.
But the EU - that on one hand claims to support the UN peace process for Western Sahara - on the other hand directly supports this injustice through an unethical fisheries cooperation.
It is ethically wrong for the EU to pay the occupation power Morocco to be able to fish in Western Sahara, while the people of Western Sahara, who own the fish, are suffering from malnutrition. The EU is simply paying money to the wrong government.
The EU in fact pays Morocco more to get access to fish, than they give in humanitarian aid to the Sahrawi refugees who suffer from malnutrition in the refugee camps. Buying the Sahrawis’ fish from Western Sahara’s occupation power, while the children in the refugee camps suffer from lack of protein, is a moral dilemma that the EU cannot escape from. Contributing to prolong the occupation means prolonging the sufferings of the Sahrawi people.
The Sahrawis still living in the occupied territory, find the EU agreement as very unfortunate. All Sahrawi organisations in the occupied part of Western Sahara protest the agreement. They say they do not benefit from it.
The EU would never deal with Palestinian resources with the Government of Israel. So why is the case different in Western Sahara?
The Norwegian government has labelled similar natural resources engagement in Western Sahara for “a particularly serious violation of fundamental ethical norms e.g. because it may strengthen Morocco's sovereignty claims and thus contribute to undermining the UN peace process". The Fish Elsewhere! campaign cannot agree more.
The EU is paying Morocco to fish in occupied Western Sahara. The EU-Morocco Fisheries Agreement is both politically controversial and in violation of international law.
The international Fish Elsewhere! campaign demands the EU to cancel its highly unethical operations, and go fishing somewhere else. No fishing in Western Sahara should take place until the conflict is solved.
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