Morocco Accuses South Africa of Misusing African Union in UN Sahara Dispute

This correspondence is published as an official document of the Security Council and will be recorded in its annals. In this document dated January 19, 2021, the Ambassador of the Kingdom to the United Nations states that South Africa is seeking to polarize the attention of the Secretary-General and the Security Council on the issue of the Moroccan Sahara, while concealing the existential African causes.

For the ambassador, South Africa is irreparably doing a disservice to its claims in the perspective of the reform of the Security Council. Pretoria is castigated for having tried to mislead the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council. Through a letter it addressed to them on December 30, 2020, it made them believe that the Extraordinary Summit of the African Union "Silencing the Guns" was devoted exclusively to the issue of the Moroccan Sahara. "The undeclared objective of South Africa is to direct the attention of the Secretary-General and the Security Council to one issue among the forty or so issues raised during this Summit, at the expense of the major concerns, expectations and hopes of the continent," deplored the permanent representative of Morocco to the UN.

According to the diplomat, the sole paragraph, which is preambular and not operational, concerning the Moroccan Sahara, in the documents of the Extraordinary Summit of the African Union last December "remains, to this day, contested". It would have been introduced into the decision of the extraordinary summit under conditions marked by a lack of transparency and a violation of the rules and procedures of the summit. This situation has raised questions and official requests for clarification from Morocco and several other Member States of the African Union, he specified.

In his correspondence, the ambassador also regretted the malicious acts of South Africa, which holds the presidency of the African Union and that of the Security Council, at the time of sending his letter. It has departed from the neutrality required by its functions, by particularizing the issue of the Moroccan Sahara, and by sacrificing the global challenges of Africa, recalls Omar Hilale.