Sådan arbejder Marokko
Marokkansk parlamentariker kræver plads på talerlisten til Vestsahara-konference
Korrespondancen mellem Global Aktion og Dr. Lahcen Haddad, medlem af Marokkos parlament og marokkansk medformand for EU-Marokkos Fælles Parlamentariske Udvalg, viser en grundlæggende uenighed om konferencens program og om, hvem der kan repræsentere Vestsaharas befolkning.
Her finder du den korrespondance, Global Aktion har haft med Dr. Lahcen Haddad, medlem af Marokkos parlament og marokkansk medformand for EU-Marokkos Fælles Parlamentariske Udvalg, om konferencen om Vestsahara senere i september.
13. september 2026 kl. 10.33 – Lahcen Haddad til Global Aktion
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing in my capacity as the Moroccan Co-Chair of the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee concerning the Western Sahara Conference that Global Aktion is co-organising at Christiansborg on 29 September 2026.
I recognise that Global Aktion has a clearly established position regarding the Western Sahara dispute. Nevertheless, the event is being presented as an opportunity to strengthen public and political debate and to examine possible paths towards peace.
Such an objective requires the presence of different perspectives. The announced programme includes a representative of the Polisario Front and representatives of organisations supporting its position, but no Moroccan speaker and no participant able to explain Morocco’s Autonomy Initiative or respond directly to the political, legal and economic claims that will be discussed.
Discussing Morocco, its relations with the European Union, the development of its southern provinces and the forthcoming UN Security Council resolution without any Moroccan participation would risk turning an announced public debate into a one-sided presentation.
I therefore invite Global Aktion, together with the other organisers, to support the inclusion of a qualified Moroccan voice. Should this be of interest, I would be pleased to suggest, for your consideration, the names of suitable Moroccan institutional, parliamentary, academic or civil-society representatives who could participate in English, either in person or remotely.
My request does not seek to prevent anyone from speaking. On the contrary, it seeks to make a genuine exchange possible, allowing the audience to hear the arguments, question them and form its own informed judgment.
I hope the programme can be adjusted accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Lahcen Haddad
Moroccan Co-Chair
EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee
14. september 2026 kl. 19.08 – Global Aktion til Lahcen Haddad
Dear Dr Haddad,
Thank you for your letter and for taking the time to contact us regarding the Western Sahara conference at Christiansborg on 29 September 2026.
As your letter refers to your role as Moroccan Co-Chair of the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee, I have copied the European Co-Chair, Mr Ruggero Razza, for transparency.
We appreciate your interest in the event and note your request for the inclusion of a Moroccan speaker. Global Aktion is, as you rightly point out, an organisation with a clear and long-standing position on Western Sahara, based on international law, the right to self-determination and the status of Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory.
The purpose of the conference is to contribute to public and political debate in Denmark on Western Sahara, including the role of Denmark, the European Union and the United Nations. The programme reflects this focus.
We fully recognise that Morocco has an official position on the conflict, including the Autonomy Initiative, and that this position is already well represented in diplomatic and political forums. At the same time, the voices of the Saharawi people and those defending their right to self-determination are far less often heard in Danish and European public debate. One of the aims of this conference is therefore to help address that imbalance.
For that reason, we do not currently plan to adjust the programme by adding an official Moroccan representative. However, Moroccan representatives are of course welcome to attend the public event, listen to the contributions and take part in any open discussion or questions from the audience, within the format of the conference.
We thank you again for your engagement and for your offer to suggest possible speakers.
With solidarity greetings
Morten Nilesen
Political & campaign Staff
Global Action – People and Planet before profit
15. september 2026 kl. 04.24 – Lahcen Haddad til Global Aktion
Dear Mr Nielsen,
Thank you for your reply and for copying Mr Razza.
Your response, however, confirms rather than addresses the concern raised in my letter.
I did not request that the conference merely add an “official Moroccan representative.” I specifically referred to Moroccan parliamentary, academic and civil-society voices, including elected representatives and inhabitants of the southern provinces who are themselves Sahrawis and whose political views differ from those of the Polisario Front.
To describe only the Polisario and organisations supporting its position as “the voices of the Sahrawi people” is precisely the problem. No organisation can be allowed to monopolise an entire identity or to decide that Sahrawis who support Morocco’s Autonomy Initiative are somehow less Sahrawi or unworthy of being heard.
You also acknowledge that Global Action holds a clear and longstanding position on the dispute. That is entirely legitimate. But a conference organised around that predetermined position, with speakers representing only one side, should be presented honestly as an advocacy event—not as an exercise in pluralistic public and political debate.
The argument that Morocco’s position is heard in other diplomatic forums cannot justify excluding it from this particular conference. Balance is assessed within the event itself, not by referring to discussions taking place elsewhere. Allowing Moroccans to sit in the audience and possibly ask questions is not equivalent to giving the different perspectives equal standing on the platform.
My request therefore remains simple: if this conference genuinely seeks to inform Danish public opinion, it should allow participants to hear the competing legal, political and Sahrawi perspectives directly and judge them on their merits.
I remain willing to suggest credible Moroccan and Sahrawi speakers from parliamentary, academic or civil-society backgrounds. The decision whether to permit genuine debate now rests with the organisers.
Kind regards,
Dr Lahcen Haddad
Moroccan Co-Chair
EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee
15. september 2026 kl. 05.29 – Global Aktion til Lahcen Haddad
Dear Dr Haddad,
Thank you for clarifying your position.
Let me begin by addressing a possible misunderstanding. Global Aktion has never claimed to be neutral on Western Sahara. We support the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination, in accordance with international law and the relevant United Nations resolutions.
Nor have we claimed that all Sahrawis hold identical political views. Sahrawis, like any other people, may disagree about their country’s future. We do not question anyone’s Sahrawi identity because they support Morocco’s Autonomy Initiative.
However, this does not mean that Morocco’s description of Western Sahara as its “southern provinces” can be accepted as a neutral starting point. Western Sahara remains listed by the United Nations as a Non-Self-Governing Territory, and its final status has not been determined through an act of self-determination by the Sahrawi people. Referring to the territory as Moroccan provinces therefore presupposes the outcome of the very dispute under discussion.
Likewise, the participation of elected representatives or civil-society actors from the Moroccan-occupied part of Western Sahara cannot replace the internationally recognised requirement that the Sahrawi people must be able to express their will freely. Elections and political institutions established under an occupying power cannot determine the sovereignty of a Non-Self-Governing Territory. Support for the Autonomy Initiative is a legitimate political position, but it is not in itself evidence that the people of Western Sahara have consented to Moroccan sovereignty.
The conference is not intended to simulate negotiations between Morocco and the Polisario Front, nor is it organised as a television-style debate in which every position must receive equal representation on the platform. It is a civil-society and parliamentary event examining Western Sahara’s unresolved decolonisation, the right to self-determination and the responsibilities of Denmark and the European Union.
You argue that genuine debate requires competing perspectives to be given equal standing within the event itself. If this principle is to be applied consistently, it must also apply to the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee. Does the Committee give representatives of the Polisario Front, Sahrawi organisations supporting independence and human-rights defenders from the occupied territory equal standing and representation in its meetings? Or does it operate within a political and institutional framework agreed between the European Parliament and Morocco?
It would be difficult to demand from a civil-society conference a degree of internal political balance that the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee does not itself practise. The Committee is entitled to have a defined institutional framework. In the same way, Global Aktion is entitled to organise a conference with a clearly stated legal and political basis.
Our position is transparent, and it has come at a very high price. On the night of 12–13 January 2025, Global Aktion’s office in Copenhagen was destroyed in a politically motivated arson attack clearly linked to our work concerning Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara. The attackers left graffiti referring to Morocco and demanding that we “stop support”. The criminal proceedings subsequently resulted in lengthy prison sentences for those responsible.
This attack will not cause us to abandon our solidarity with the Sahrawi people or to treat Morocco’s claim to sovereignty as legally equivalent to the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.
An event can contribute meaningfully to public and political debate without the organisers being neutral or granting equal platform time to every competing claim. Advocacy and serious public debate are not mutually exclusive.
Moroccan representatives and supporters of the Autonomy Initiative are welcome to attend and participate in the discussion from the audience. We will, however, not restructure the conference on the premise that Morocco’s claim to sovereignty must be given equal standing with the Sahrawi people’s internationally recognised right to determine the territory’s future.
Co-Chair, Mr Razza, are kept informed in this correspondence.
We appreciate your willingness to engage, even where our positions clearly differ.
Kind regards,
Morten Nilesen
Political & campaign Staff
Global Action – People and Planet before profit
22. september 2026 kl. 00.29 – Lahcen Haddad til Global Aktion
Dear Mr Nilesen,
Thank you for your reply. It has the merit of confirming, with considerable clarity, precisely what I had questioned: your conference is not conceived as an open examination of the Western Sahara dispute. It is a partisan advocacy event whose political conclusion has been determined in advance.
Since you have raised several substantive points, allow me to address them directly.
First, you state that Global Aktion has never claimed to be neutral. That is now perfectly clear. But the issue is not your right to hold a political position. You are entitled to campaign for independence, just as others are entitled to support autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. The issue is the intellectual and democratic credibility of organising a supposedly parliamentary and civil-society conference about the future of a disputed territory while excluding from the platform Sahrawis who reject your preferred outcome.
Calling such an event a conference on self-determination does not make it representative. It remains a conference advocating one predetermined interpretation of self-determination.
Second, you rightly acknowledge that Sahrawis do not all hold the same political views. Yet your programme is built as though the only politically authentic Sahrawis were those who support the Polisario Front.
This exposes the central fiction underlying your position: the portrayal of a single, homogeneous “Sahrawi people”, possessing one political will and represented exclusively by the Polisario. No such unified political body has ever been democratically constituted. Sahrawi identity is real, but the claim that this diverse population forms a single political constituency speaking through the Polisario is a constructed political assertion—not an established democratic fact.
The Polisario has never been elected by the population of Western Sahara. It has never submitted its alleged representative mandate to a free, pluralistic election involving all Sahrawis. It cannot therefore claim a democratic legitimacy superior to that of Sahrawi representatives who have actually stood for election and received votes in Laayoune, Dakhla, Smara, Boujdour and elsewhere.
The United Nations engages with the Polisario as a party to the dispute. That does not transform it into the democratically elected or exclusive representative of every Sahrawi.
Third, you object to Morocco’s use of the term “southern provinces” because you say it presupposes the outcome of the dispute. Yet you repeatedly use the expressions “Moroccan occupation”, “occupied territory” and the Sahrawis’ “country”.
Your terminology does exactly what you accuse Moroccan terminology of doing: it assumes the legal and political conclusion before the discussion has begun. “Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara” is not a neutral United Nations designation. It is Global Aktion’s political characterisation.
You cannot reject “southern provinces” as prejudicial while presenting “occupied territory” as an uncontested legal fact. If terminology is to remain open, that discipline must apply to both sides.
Fourth, the territory’s inclusion on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories does not prove the series of conclusions you derive from it. It does not establish the Polisario’s exclusive representativeness. It does not make independence the sole legally permissible outcome. Nor does it invalidate autonomy as an expression of self-determination.
Indeed, Security Council Resolution 2797 calls for negotiations on the basis of Morocco’s Autonomy Initiative and recognises that genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty could constitute the most feasible outcome. Your letter simply ignores this fundamental development in the United Nations framework.
Self-determination is a principle. Independence is only one possible political outcome. Autonomy, freely exercised through elected legislative, executive and judicial institutions, is another. By presenting independence and self-determination as though they were synonymous, you convert a legal principle into a political slogan.
Fifth, I have never claimed that elections alone settle the international dispute. That is a convenient distortion of my argument.
My point is that elected Sahrawis exist, that they hold different political opinions, and that their democratic legitimacy cannot simply be erased because it is inconvenient to the narrative of your conference. Their participation does not by itself determine sovereignty, but it is unquestionably relevant evidence of political agency, representation and consent.
By contrast, you accord the unelected Polisario the status of authentic national representative while dismissing elected Sahrawis as mere “Moroccan representatives and supporters”. That is not democratic reasoning. It is ideological selection: those who agree with you are treated as the people; those who disagree are treated as instruments of an occupying power.
Sixth, your comparison with the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee is fundamentally false.
The Committee is an official bilateral institution composed of parliamentarians from the European Parliament and the Parliament of the Kingdom of Morocco. Its members possess electoral and institutional mandates. Sahrawi citizens are represented within Moroccan elected institutions, including by parliamentarians originating from the southern regions.
The Polisario is neither a parliament, nor a recognised state institution within the EU–Morocco bilateral framework, nor an elected representative body. It has no automatic entitlement to membership in a joint committee created between two institutional partners.
Moreover, the Committee does not advertise itself as a conference convened to determine who represents the population of Western Sahara. It operates under an agreed bilateral mandate covering the entire EU–Morocco relationship.
Comparing that institutional body with a civil-society conference specifically organised to discuss Western Sahara is therefore a category error. The Committee’s composition derives from its legal and institutional nature. Your conference’s composition results from the organisers’ political choice to provide the platform to one camp and confine the other to the audience.
Seventh, you state that your event is not a negotiation or a television debate and therefore need not provide equal representation. No one suggested turning it into either.
Pluralism does not require a stopwatch or mathematically identical speaking time. It requires a genuine opportunity for materially different perspectives to be presented from the platform. Inviting autonomy supporters to sit in the audience, listen to speakers selected from one political camp and perhaps ask a question afterwards is not pluralism. It is tokenism.
Your formulation is revealing: independence supporters are presented as representatives of the Sahrawi people, while autonomy supporters are merely permitted to attend. You therefore recognise their Sahrawi identity in theory while denying it institutional expression in practice.
Eighth, I unequivocally condemn the arson attack against Global Aktion’s offices. Political violence, intimidation and destruction of property are entirely unacceptable, whatever cause their perpetrators claim to serve. You have my unreserved solidarity on that point.
But the attack, however serious, cannot answer legitimate questions about the composition, balance or intellectual integrity of your conference. Nor can it confer legal validity upon Global Aktion’s political interpretation of the dispute. Victimhood does not transform an advocacy position into an uncontested truth, and condemning violence does not require accepting your narrative.
Ninth, your assertion that Morocco’s claim cannot be placed on the same level as “the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination” rests on another false opposition. Morocco does not deny self-determination; it proposes that it be exercised through a broad autonomy arrangement. The actual disagreement concerns the form and outcome of self-determination—not the existence of the principle itself.
By reserving the term “self-determination” exclusively for the option favoured by the Polisario, you have already decided what the population is supposedly allowed to choose.
Finally, you are correct that advocacy and serious debate are not inherently incompatible. But serious debate ends where the organisers predetermine who qualifies as an authentic representative, define one disputed political position as established law, and exclude contrary Sahrawi voices from the platform.
Global Aktion has every right to organise a pro-Polisario or pro-independence campaign meeting. It should simply describe it honestly. What it cannot credibly do is present an ideologically curated platform as a meaningful parliamentary and civil-society examination of Western Sahara’s future.
Such a format poorly reflects the democratic values normally associated with Denmark: political pluralism, open disagreement, equality of participation and respect for citizens who refuse to conform to an approved political narrative. Danish democracy should be strong enough to hear elected Sahrawis who challenge Global Aktion’s position, not merely tolerate their presence in the audience.
In these circumstances, your invitation to attend as a member of the audience does not constitute meaningful participation and does not address my objection. I will not lend legitimacy to a format in which the conclusion has been fixed, one camp controls the platform and the other is expected merely to listen.
As this exchange concerns Global Aktion’s choices as organiser, I see no reason to involve Mr Razza further in what risks becoming an unproductive bilateral argument. The EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee should not be drawn into defending the political design of your conference.
My position remains straightforward: if you wish to organise an advocacy event for the Polisario’s position, say so openly. If you wish to organise a credible conference about Western Sahara, then Sahrawis supporting autonomy—including elected representatives—must be present on the platform, not relegated to the audience.
Kind regards,
Dr Lahcen Haddad
Member of Moroccan Parliament
23. september 2026 kl. 12.37 – Lahcen Haddad til Global Aktion
Dear Mr. Nilesen,
For reasons of public transparency, I intend to publish my own letters concerning the conference, accompanied by a fair and accurate summary of Global Aktion’s responses. I will not reproduce your emails verbatim or disclose personal contact information. Should you believe that any element of my summary requires factual clarification, you are welcome to inform me.
Lahcen Haddad
23. september 2026 kl. 13.16 – Global Aktion til Lahcen Haddad
Dear Dr Haddad,
I strongly doubt that your summary of my emails will fairly reflect my views.
I will therefore share our full correspondence with the members of the Danish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and the Danish Members of the European Parliament.
I understand that you have not seen my reply to your most recent email, so I have included it below.
Indsat svar:
Dear Dr Haddad,
Thank you for your detailed reply and for your unequivocal condemnation of the arson attack against Global Aktion.
Your letter clarifies the fundamental difference between us. That difference does not concern whether individuals of Sahrawi origin may hold different political opinions. They clearly do. It concerns the international legal status of Western Sahara, the identity of the people entitled to exercise self-determination, and the legal and political role accorded to the Frente POLISARIO by the United Nations and, more recently, by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish political pluralism from legal status.
Western Sahara is not recognised by the United Nations as part of Morocco. It remains on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories and is therefore an unresolved question of decolonisation. Morocco is not recognised by the United Nations as the administering Power of the territory, and the International Court of Justice concluded in its 1975 Advisory Opinion that the evidence did not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco. The Court consequently reaffirmed that decolonisation must proceed through the free and genuine expression of the will of the people of the territory.
These are not positions invented by Global Aktion or by the POLISARIO Front. They are elements of the territory’s international legal status.
The existence of a “people of Western Sahara” is equally not a political fiction constructed by Global Aktion. It is the legal premise on which the entire UN decolonisation process rests. The right to self-determination belongs to that people—not to Morocco, not to the present population considered without distinction, and not to foreign governments.
The role of the POLISARIO Front must also be described accurately. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 34/37 referred to the POLISARIO Front as “the representative of the people of Western Sahara” and recommended its full participation in the search for a political solution. Resolution 35/19 again called upon Morocco and the POLISARIO Front, expressly describing the latter as the representative of the people of Western Sahara, to enter into direct negotiations.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has adopted a careful but legally significant position. In its Grand Chamber judgments of 4 October 2024 in Joined Cases C-779/21 P and C-799/21 P, the Court did not describe the POLISARIO Front as the officially recognised exclusive representative of every Sahrawi. We do not claim otherwise.
However, the Court did find that the POLISARIO Front is a “privileged interlocutor” in the UN process for determining the future status of Western Sahara. It confirmed that the POLISARIO Front has legal capacity and standing before the EU courts to challenge EU measures affecting the legal situation and right to self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. For the purposes of those proceedings, the Court expressly treated the people of Western Sahara as represented by the POLISARIO Front.
That is considerably more than the status of an ordinary political organisation or merely one opinion among many. It is a specific international and legal role arising from the unresolved decolonisation process.
This does not mean that the POLISARIO Front is democratically infallible or that every Sahrawi necessarily supports it. Nor does it prevent criticism of its policies or internal structures. But it does mean that the role assigned to it by the United Nations and recognised by the EU courts cannot be equated with that of individuals elected within institutions established and administered by Morocco in a territory over which Morocco claims sovereignty.
Elections conducted under Moroccan law cannot determine the international status of Western Sahara. Nor can participation in Moroccan municipal, regional or parliamentary institutions constitute, by itself, the free and genuine expression of the will of the people of Western Sahara on the question of sovereignty.
Those elected representatives may possess mandates within Morocco’s constitutional system. They may also sincerely support autonomy. But such mandates do not confer upon them international authority to represent the people of Western Sahara in the UN decolonisation process.
This distinction is also reflected in the EU Court’s judgments. The Court held that consulting the current inhabitants of the territory was not equivalent to obtaining the consent of the people of Western Sahara. It noted that a significant part of that people lives outside the territory, particularly in exile. The Court therefore rejected the proposition that consultations conducted among institutions and economic or political actors operating under Moroccan administration could substitute for the consent of the people holding the right to self-determination.
The Court consequently annulled the EU decisions approving the 2019 EU–Morocco trade arrangements insofar as they were applied to Western Sahara without the required consent. It reaffirmed that Western Sahara has a status “separate and distinct” from Morocco and that the people of Western Sahara must be treated as a third party to agreements concluded between the EU and Morocco.
That judgment is directly relevant to your argument. If elected representatives within Morocco’s system were legally sufficient to express the consent of the people of Western Sahara, the Court would not have annulled the agreements.
Regarding terminology, I accept that “occupation” is a legal and political characterisation and not a neutral geographical expression. However, it is not terminology invented by Global Aktion. General Assembly Resolutions 34/37 and 35/19 referred expressly to the continued occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco and called upon Morocco to terminate that occupation.
By contrast, the expression “southern provinces” incorporates Western Sahara into the Kingdom of Morocco and thereby presents Morocco’s disputed claim of sovereignty as an established fact. The expressions are therefore not legally equivalent. In a strictly descriptive context, “the part of Western Sahara controlled by Morocco” may be used. But Global Aktion is fully entitled to describe the situation as an occupation, provided that we are clear about the legal and political basis for doing so.
You also refer to Security Council Resolution 2797. We do not ignore that resolution or the significant political change it represents. It makes Morocco’s Autonomy Proposal the basis for negotiations and states that genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty “could” constitute or represent a most feasible solution.
However, the resolution does not recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, nor does it determine the territory’s final status. Its wording remains conditional. It also requires a final and mutually acceptable political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, reaffirms previous Security Council resolutions and continues to treat Morocco and the POLISARIO Front as parties to the political process.
Resolution 2797 therefore gives strong political preference to the Moroccan proposal, but it does not transform Morocco’s sovereignty claim into settled international law. A Security Council resolution advancing a framework for negotiations is not equivalent to a judicial determination of territorial sovereignty.
We agree that independence is not the only theoretically possible outcome of self-determination. Autonomy, free association or integration may be legitimate outcomes when they result from the free and genuine will of the people concerned. But autonomy cannot qualify as self-determination if Moroccan sovereignty is made an irrevocable condition before the people of Western Sahara have freely expressed their will.
The decisive legal issue is not whether Morocco labels its proposal “self-determination”. It is whether the people entitled to self-determination are genuinely free to accept or reject the status offered to them. An arrangement under which they may choose only the internal organisation of a sovereignty already decided by Morocco is not automatically equivalent to the exercise of self-determination required by international law.
Regarding the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee, I agree that it is institutionally different from a civil-society conference. Our comparison was not intended to suggest that the two bodies have identical legal functions. The point was political consistency.
The Committee is a bilateral EU–Morocco institution and naturally includes representatives of the Moroccan Parliament. But that does not make it a representative institution of the people of Western Sahara for the purposes of determining the territory’s status. Nor can the participation of parliamentarians elected within Morocco’s constitutional framework alter the EU Court’s conclusion that Western Sahara is separate and distinct from Morocco and that the consent of its people cannot be replaced by consultation with Moroccan institutions.
Our conference is not a diplomatic negotiation, an intergovernmental body or a tribunal charged with determining the final status of Western Sahara. It is an event organised by parliamentarians and civil-society organisations wishing to examine self-determination, international law and solidarity with the Sahrawi people.
We have been open about that purpose. Advocacy does not become intellectually dishonest merely because it starts from a stated legal and political position. Conferences on apartheid, colonialism, military occupation or other violations of international law are not required to grant equal platform status to representatives of the state whose policies are being criticised.
This does not erase the existence or identity of Sahrawis who support Morocco’s proposal. They are entitled to speak, organise, participate in public debate and challenge our conclusions. Our invitation to attend, ask questions and take part in the discussion was genuine. However, recognition of their right to participate does not oblige the organisers to redesign the programme or give Morocco’s sovereignty claim equal status with the internationally recognised right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination.
I also accept your point that the attack on Global Aktion does not determine the legal questions discussed above. It was mentioned as relevant political context, not as proof of the correctness of our interpretation of international law. We appreciate your clear condemnation of that violence.
Finally, Mr Razza was copied because your original intervention referred to your position as Co-Chair of the EU–Morocco Joint Parliamentary Committee. It was therefore reasonable to ensure transparency towards the other Co-Chair. Since you have now clarified that you do not wish the Committee to be involved in this further exchange, we will respect that.
We acknowledge that you disagree fundamentally with the political design of the conference. Nevertheless, we cannot accept the premise that democratic credibility requires us to disregard the legal status of Western Sahara, the role given to the POLISARIO Front in the UN process, or the judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The programme will therefore remain focused on the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination and on the obligations arising from international law. Our invitation to attend and participate in the discussion remains open.
With solidarity greetings
Morten Nilesen
Political & campaign Staff
Global Action – People and Planet before profit