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Appendix 3: Letter from Human Rights Watch to SADR Authorities
February 8, 2008
President Mohamed Abdelaziz
The Presidency
Rabouni Camp
Tindouf Wilaya
Algeria
Dear President Abdelaziz,
Thank you for meeting with us and for your hospitality last November during our
research mission to the Sahrawi camps near Tindouf, Algeria.
As we discussed with you at that time, Human Rights Watch is researching human
rights conditions in the Polisario-administered camps and in the Moroccanadministered
areas of Western Sahara.
In that regard we are addressing you this private letter in the hope that you will
respond substantively to the concerns expressed herein, so that we may reflect your
government’s official views in the report that Human Rights Watch intends to issue.
We will be able to do that if your response reaches us by March 3, 2008.
During our visit to the camps, we investigated allegations that some dark-skinned
camp residents continue to suffer from slavery-like practices. In separate interviews,
several refugees described a practice whereby unmarried women who belong to
what they themselves labeled “slave” families cannot marry without the consent of
persons they described as “owners”.
When the families of a woman and a man who wish to marry go before a qadi (judge)
in the camp to ask that he perform a marriage, the qadi will first ask if the “slave”
woman has the consent of her “owner”. The qadi will refuse to perform the marriage
ceremony without the “owner’s” consent. One resident of the camps showed us a
Human Rights in Western Sahara and Tindouf 174