Banjul (The Gambia) 08 Mai 2025 (SPS)- Ambassador Malainin Lakhal, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Sahrawi Republic to the AU, delivered an oral statement before the At the 83rd Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, held in Banjul-The Gambia, during discussions of the report of the Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment, and Human Rights Violations in Africa.
The ambassador’s intervention shed light on the ongoing and unlawful exploitation of natural resources in Western Sahara—Africa’s last colony—and its grave implications for environmental integrity, human rights, and the Sahrawi people's inalienable right to self-determination.
Ambassador Lakhal emphasized the complicity of international and European entities that, while professing support for human rights, actively participate in or turn a blind eye to Morocco’s illegal exploitation of Sahrawi resources.
He warned of the dangerous trend of “greenwashing” the occupation through renewable energy projects that are not only illegitimate under international law but also exacerbate environmental degradation, dispossession, and repression.
Following is the full text of the statement:
Hon. Chairperson of the Commission, Honourable Commissioners, Y.E. Ambassadors, Distinguished delegates, all protocols observed
Thank you, Honorable Chairperson, for granting the Sahrawi Republic the floor. I would also like to commend the Chairperson of the Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment, and Human Rights Violations in Africa for the comprehensive report.
My intervention will focus on the issue of natural resource exploitation—and its intersection with environmental concerns and human and people’s rights—as it is a particularly acute issue in the case of the Sahrawi Republic. In Western Sahara, natural resources are unlawfully exploited and looted by foreign entities. This includes not only the occupying power, Morocco, but also several European and international actors who publicly champion human rights and democratic values publicly, yet deliberately ignore these very principles when it comes to Western Sahara. Their actions amount to complicity in what can only be described as a systematic and illicit exploitation of African wealth.
Even more troubling is the use of this illegal exploitation to greenwash the occupying power and present illegal green energy projects as model environmental projects, when they are undertaken in an illegally occupied territory.
Two key rulings reaffirm the illegality of Morocco’s and other actors plunder actions in our territory. On October 4, 2024, the European Court of Justice confirmed that EU-Morocco agreements cannot apply to Western Sahara, a "distinct and separate" territory over which Morocco has no sovereignty as the Court clearly stated.
Similarly, in 2022, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights declared Morocco’s presence an occupation and its resource exploitation a violation of the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination. The Court urged all states to refrain from any actions that support the occupation or undermine Sahrawi rights.
The construction of these energy projects has material environmental consequences and negative impacts on Sahrawi people: land dispossession, disrupted livelihoods, demographic engineering in favour of Moroccan settlers, and repression of Sahrawis who resist environmental harm and rights abuses.
Moreover, international climate funds, including those under UNFCCC, are increasingly backing projects in occupied Western Sahara—raising serious legal and ethical concerns. This act risks financing an illegal occupation under the guise of sustainability, effectively greenwashing human rights violations using climate narratives to mask and facilitate a settlement occupation and illegal exploitation.
Finally honourable commissioners, the path to climate justice cannot be paved with the denial of peoples’ right to self-determination. Western Sahara must not become a testing ground for a green transition that excludes its rightful people. A truly sustainable future in Western Sahara must begin with the full recognition of the Sahrawi Republic’ sovereignty, and the restoration of justice in this last colony in Africa.
Thank you.
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