Western Sahara

News in Brief

In mid-November, despite the Moroccan security forces, women demonstrated publicly in Laayoune, capital of occupied Western Sahara, against Kosmos Energy’s plans to drill for oil offshore.

Earlier in November, a group of Sahrawi prisoners wrote to christian churches in Texas, USA, where Kosmos is based, explaining the appalling human rights situation of people in Western Sahara, and the illegal use of Sahrawi natural resources by Morocco. If Kosmos found oil in Sahrawi waters, ‘it will give the Moroccan government even more incentive to stop us from exercising our right to self-determination’, and could ‘aggravate an already horrific situation’, the prisoners wrote.