Event

Event Overview

In 1975, the International Court of Justice recognized the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination and rejected territorial claims to Western Sahara advanced by both Morocco and Mauritania. Nonetheless, Western Sahara remains classified by the UN Special Committee on Decolonization as a “non-self-governing territory”—one that has not yet attained full measure of self-government —and has been under de facto Moroccan control since the withdrawal of Spain from its former colony in 1976. The Polisario Front leads the struggle of the people of Western Sahara for independence and self-determination and has declared a Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), with a government in exile in Algeria.  Plans for a referendum to determine the future of Western Sahara, which was first proposed in the 1960s and continue to be supported by representatives of the Sahrawi people, never materialized. In 2022, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights reaffirmed that Morocco’s continued occupation of Western Sahara constituted a violation of the right to self-determination under regional and international law.

Please join us for a panel discussion with Ambassador Mouloud Said, Representative of Western Sahara in Washington, D.C., and Bill Fletcher Jr., international justice and labor advocate, for a discussion of the current status of Western Sahara and ongoing political and legal advocacy efforts to achieve Sahrawi independence.

Lunch will be provided.

This event is sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, Human Rights Program, HLS Advocates for Human Rights, and the Harvard African Law Association (HALA).

Panelists:

Ambassador Mouloud Said is the Ambassador at Large and Representative of Western Sahara in Washington, D.C. He also served as the people’s ambassador to the African Union from 1976-1986 and representative to the United Nations from 1986-1990. Ambassador Said grew up in the Western Sahara but was displaced in the aftermath of the Moroccan and Mauritanian occupation of 1975. He advocates for the independence and human rights of the people of Western Sahara, both living in their homeland and those in one of the world’s oldest refugee resettlements in southwestern Algeria.

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a distinguished advocate for labor rights and international justice and a foreign policy expert. Fletcher’s impactful career includes serving as the former president of TransAfrica Forum and as a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the founder of the Campaign to End the Occupation of the Western Sahara, a coalition dedicated to supporting human rights and self-determination for the Sahrawi people. He is a seasoned editorial writer and columnist for esteemed publications and co-author of the acclaimed book “Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path Toward Social Justice.”