Occupied El Aaiun, 26 December 2025 (SPS) – The number of international observers, parliamentarians, human rights defenders, and foreign media workers expelled by the Moroccan occupation from the occupied Western Sahara since 2014 up to 24 August of this year has reached 329 foreign observers from 21 countries, the most recent of which were two human rights activists from the international organization “Nonviolence,” in an effort to conceal its human rights violations.
A joint statement by the League for the Protection of Sahrawi Prisoners in Moroccan Jails and the French Association for Friendship and Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa reported that the occupation authorities expelled 27 foreigners during the current year, including parliamentarians, human rights defenders, and journalists from Spain, the United States, and Portugal, as part of the tightened blockade imposed on the occupied Sahrawi territory.
Norway topped the list of countries in terms of the number of foreigners expelled from the occupied territory with 133 people, followed by Spain (105), Sweden (9), Italy (6), the United States (6), France (6), Poland (5), and the United Kingdom (4).
According to the same source, Morocco has, in past years, expelled or barred seven international non-governmental human rights organizations from entering the occupied Sahrawi territories, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Nonviolence Organization, NOVACT, and the Carter Center, with the aim of concealing the reality of the serious human rights violations and the plundering of the Sahrawi people’s resources.
The same source also indicated that the Moroccan occupation has, for the ninth consecutive year, prevented the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from entering occupied Western Sahara. The lack of a mandate for the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) to monitor and report on human rights in the occupied cities has contributed to the continuation of Morocco’s violations against unarmed Sahrawi civilians.
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