Recognition of Western Sahara as Moroccan

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes, I will. I was trying to explain why I feel so strongly that Morocco is a reliable partner for the United Kingdom. I am not sure what point the hon. Gentleman was trying to make. Yes, we do go overseas on visits where we try to increase our understanding of other nations. We do not have a budget in the House of Commons to pay for those visits; we are guests of the foreign country, which is recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

During our visit to Morocco, we had a very unsatisfactory discussion with the British ambassador on the telephone. As on many other occasions, the British ambassador tried to indicate that we cannot recognise Western Sahara because somehow it will impinge on or affect our relationship with our overseas territories, particularly the Falkland Islands. Yet, when I pressed the British ambassador to explain why and how that could be the case, no satisfactory response was forthcoming.

I seek clarification from the Minister on this point. Is it the fact that we cannot recognise Western Sahara as being Moroccan because there is some legal, constitutional or technical difficulty that might affect our relationship with our overseas territories? I cannot see that, given that France, which is in the process of recognising this issue, also has overseas territories. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that point. We need to recognise Western Sahara, as Israel and America have done. At the very least, we should follow Spain, the former colonial power, along with Germany and France in recognising that the autonomy proposals are the only way forward.

I have mentioned women’s rights; during my visit to Dakhla we had the opportunity to visit the new port that is being constructed in Western Sahara, and I was able to speak to Mrs Nisrine Iouzzi, who is the lady who runs the 1,600 engineers and construction workers at the port. It is going to be an extremely important link, not just for Morocco but for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, including Niger, Chad, Mali and many other countries.

One way to deal with illegal immigration in Europe and to support Morocco is through a programme of support for illegal migrants, which I saw at first hand in Dakhla. The Moroccan Government are helping illegal migrants to settle there, training them and giving them opportunities.

Only four Arab nations have signed the Abraham accords, of course. The first contact between the Egyptians and the Israelis in the 1970s was brokered by Rabat, leading to Sadat’s visit to Israel and, ultimately, the peace accord. In 1994 the late King Hassan hosted a World Economic Forum, inviting Israelis and Palestinians to Casablanca for their first joint session at an international conference.

Professor Marc Weller, chair of international law and international constitutional studies at the University of Cambridge, has submitted a report to the Foreign Office. He was commissioned to evaluate the concept of why the United Kingdom may find it difficult to recognise Western Sahara, bearing in mind the intricate relationship we have with our overseas territories. I have met Professor Marc Weller here in the House of Commons on two separate occasions over the past few weeks. He submitted his report to the Foreign Office three weeks ago; I would be grateful if the Minister could recognise whether it has been received and say whether his officials will brief him on it.

Let us not forget that Professor Marc Weller, chair of international law and international constitutional studies at Cambridge, is one of this country’s leading academics on international law and works in the sphere on which I am pressing the Minister directly. He says that when he took on the commission he found it a potentially daunting prospect, yet after the research he has done he has come to the conclusion that recognising Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, and indeed recognising the autonomy proposals, would actually strengthen our relationship with our overseas territories and with the Falkland Islands. Professor Marc Weller from the University of Cambridge says the direct opposite of what we hear from our own ambassador in Morocco.

During my visit to Western Sahara, we came across representatives of 30 countries that have set up consulates in Dakhla, and more than 90 countries around the world have recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The hon. Member has obviously done detailed research; did he have a chance to meet the Polisario, and has he visited the refugee camps in Algeria?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I rather suspected that the right hon. Gentleman would ask that question. I will come to that later in my speech. I have not been, as yet, to the Tindouf camp in Algeria where the Polisario are, but I have received very serious allegations from various friends in the Moroccan Parliament. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman referred to the Tindouf camp, because we have received very serious allegations about the promotion of terrorism within it. We have received transcripts of audio discussions from the Tindouf camp in which various members of the Polisario Front urge young female fighters to plant bombs in Dakhla and to try to murder their way back to the Western Sahara. That is a great concern if it is true, and I strongly urge the Minister to take up the matter with his Algerian counterpart to seek the veracity of the situation.

We here in the United Kingdom have had to deal with terrorism ourselves during the course of our lifetime, have we not? We have experienced bombings in this country by the IRA. We have experienced innocent men, women and children being murdered and bombed in Manchester, London and other places. Indeed, there was an attempt to assassinate the leader of my party in the Brighton hotel bombing. So we, of all countries, should recognise the difficulties that Morocco is facing, if the allegations are correct and it is true that the Tindouf camps are still being used by the Polisario as a hotbed to promote terrorist activities across the border in Morocco.

Finally, there are allegations from organisations, even including Amnesty International, which I am sure the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) respects and recognises, of human rights abuses in the Tindouf camps. I will put those allegations into the House of Commons Library. Will the Minister take that issue on board?

I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for talking about Morocco rather than just Western Sahara. When we discuss Western Sahara, I do not think we can discount why and how certain parliamentarians have so much confidence in Morocco, because of the strategic bilateral relationship we are creating with the country. I pay tribute to the Moroccan ambassador, who works tirelessly and very effectively on behalf of his nation in trying to educate us parliamentarians about the Moroccan perspective.

I recognise and understand that there are hon. Members with views different from my own, and I am sure we will hear those views later in the debate. From my perspective, I want the Minister to realise and recognise that in the remaining time we have in government, however short or long that is, this issue will not go away. We are falling behind our main competitors, such as Spain, France, Germany and America, and unless the issue is resolved satisfactorily for the Moroccans and unless we recognise Western Sahara, we will be jeopardising our relationship with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for securing the debate. We should also put on the record our thanks to the Library for a very good briefing on the situation of the Western Sahara. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham had to say. It is unfortunate that the first 21 minutes of his speech were taken up by talking about Morocco and he barely mentioned the issue of the legality of Morocco’s occupation of the Western Sahara. That is the subject of the debate and the area we should be talking about.

I first raised the issue of the occupation of the Western Sahara in this House in 1984. I have had the good fortune to visit the refugee camps in Algeria on two occasions and to visit the part of Western Sahara that is controlled by the Sahrawi people—a small part of it—near the border with Mauritania. I have also visited the occupied territories and Morocco, and met many shades of opinion, both within the Polisario and within Morocco itself. I have done my best to take a view on the situation based on its history.

Western Sahara was occupied by Spain; it was a Spanish colony. On the return of democracy to Spain in the 1970s, Spain withdrew from Western Sahara. The United Nations General Assembly requested that, as part of a process of decolonisation, the people of Western Sahara—the Sahrawi people—should have the opportunity to decide their own future; they should have a choice they could make. The choice has now come down to the three options that have been put, which I will come back to in a moment: independence, autonomy or incorporation within Morocco.

We must recognise that if we just say, as the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham appears to be saying, that Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara should now be confirmed and condoned and we should trade with Morocco absolutely normally, as though nothing had happened in Western Sahara, we are failing in our duties under international law. The issue was taken to the International Court of Justice in the 1970s, and an advisory opinion was issued requiring a referendum for the people of Western Sahara. That referendum has never taken place.

The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara was established to ensure that there was a peaceful future for the people of Western Sahara. There has been conflict in the past, and there is a danger that it will return. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham referred in his speech to issues surrounding Northern Ireland and to other issues. Surely, the way to avoid a conflict in the future is to look at the heart of the issue and to deal with it in a peaceful way, which is where the referendum comes in. The referendum has not happened.

UN representatives have tried hard over many years to get agreement on what an electoral roll would look like and who can vote on the future of Western Sahara—for example, the people in the refugee camps in Tindouf and the Western Sahara diaspora, as well as the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara itself. I hope that the UK Government will recognise the importance of international law in that respect and recognise the right of the people of Western Sahara to decide their own future. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham effectively is, effectively, denying the Sahrawi people any rights whatever. He is saying that the occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco on the departure of Spain should just be accepted as a done deal.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

In the right hon. Gentleman’s logic, the United States of America, Israel, Germany, Spain, France and the Netherlands are all wrong that the autonomy proposals from the Kingdom of Morocco are the correct solution going forward. Is he saying that all those NATO allies of ours are wrong?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

What I am saying is that international law should come first, so the decision by Donald Trump, when he was President of the United States, to recognise Moroccan occupation, which few other countries have done, is a backward step for international law. It will obviously make a lot of people—particularly Sahrawi people—extremely angry, because they see in it no right of representation for themselves.

My argument is that the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion was in terms of a process of decolonisation. The issue has been taken to the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation in New York, and I was there myself on that occasion, speaking about exactly this issue. Surely, the position we should adopt as a member of the United Nations and the Security Council is to support the General Assembly decision, the Security Council’s continued appointment of MINURSO, and the Secretary-General’s appointee to try to bring about a process for the future.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham seems to be using the Morocco’s huge economic advances as a reason for overriding international law in respect of Western Sahara. I respectfully say to him that the two things are not connected. Morocco’s trade with Europe, its developing solar economy, the proposal for building an underground train tunnel to Spain and all those sorts of things are great and very welcome—many things in Morocco are extremely welcome and very good—but that does not take away the fundamental point that the occupation of Western Sahara on the departure of Spain remains illegal, and we should not be trading in goods produced in illegally occupied territories. That argument goes on all around the world.

What I hope comes out of this debate is a statement by our Government that we will continue to respect international law, engage with Morocco and Polisario and engage assertively with the United Nations to ensure that this long-running conflict can be brought to a conclusion by giving the Sahrawi people a fundamental right to decide their own future. That right can be supressed and wished away, but the desire for recognition and self-determination of the Sahrawi people, as with peoples all around the world, will not go away.