Argentine President Alberto Fernández and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met during the 7th Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit held in Argentina in January / credit: Lula da Silva / Twitter
Editor’s Note: The following dispatches are a service of Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service.
Argentina and Brazil Rejoin UNASUR
The governments of Argentine President Alberto Fernández and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have officially rejoined the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a regional integration organization founded in May 2008.
Between 2018 and 2020, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, under the leadership of conservative heads of state, withdrew from UNASUR due to their alignment with U.S. interests.
In November 2019, following the coup against democratically elected president Evo Morales, the de facto government led by Jeanine Áñez withdrew Bolivia from UNASUR. In November 2020, after the election of President Luis Arce, the country rejoined the regional body.
In August 2021, the government of former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo also announced his country’s reincorporation into the bloc. However, following his ouster and arrest in December 2022, Castillo’s successor Dina Boluarte suspended Peru’s membership.
On April 5, Argentine foreign minister Santiago Cafiero announced the country’s official return to the body after four years of absence. Likewise, on Thursday, April 6, President Lula signed a decree making official Brazil’s return to UNASUR, also after four years.
The measure marked a step in Lula’s drive to reposition the country’s politics after the four years of conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro, who withdrew Brazil from the bloc in April 2019.
Brazil’s decision came a day after the member states of the Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Countries against Inflation (APALCI), including Brazil and Argentina, agreed to join efforts to face the inflation crisis and strengthen regional integration and trade.
On April 5, government officials of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries took part in a virtual anti-inflation summit to form an alliance to jointly face rising prices / credit: Presidencia Mexico
Latin American and Caribbean Governments Agree to Join Forces Against Inflation
On April 5, the leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries took part in a virtual summit against inflation called by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The summit sought to form an alliance to jointly face the inflation crisis affecting the region.
In addition to President AMLO of Mexico, the countries represented were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, Colombia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
During the meeting, political leaders discussed joint solutions to face high food prices and shortages in the region, as well as to strengthen regional integration and trade. They expressed their will to unite efforts to guarantee economic growth and development that promote inclusion, equity, and sustainability of food and nutrition security for people, and to face inflationary pressures on the basic food basket and essential goods and services. They also committed to strengthening their economies and productive sectors through inclusion, solidarity, and international cooperation.
In this regard, the leaders signed a joint declaration and agreed on actions to “advance the definition of trade facilities as well as logistical, financial, and other measures that will allow the exchange of basic food basket products and intermediate goods under better conditions, with the priority of lowering the costs of such products for the poorest and most vulnerable population.”
“The emergency exits are always blocked. We have over 100 pallets stacked the whole length of the warehouse—blocking all the fire exits. If there was a fire, we would not all be able to get out,” said Sersie Cobb, Jr., Ryder System worker in South Carolina / credit: Union of Southern Service Workers / Twitter
Eighty-Seven Percent of Service Workers in the U.S. South Were Injured on the Job Last Year
A March survey of 347 service workers in the U.S. South found that a shocking 87 percent were injured on the job in the last year. The workers surveyed came from eleven states across the “Black Belt,” or Southern states with historically large Black populations. Workers organized under the Union of Southern Service Workers filed a landmark civil rights complaint against the South Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Administration (SC OSHA), alleging that the agency “discriminates by disproportionately excluding Black workers from the protection of its programmed inspections.”
The survey, conducted by the Strategic Organizing Center, laid bare the shocking reality of the service industry in the U.S. South, composed of principally Black workers. More than half of survey respondents reported observing serious health and safety hazards at work.
The survey data indicates that workers often fear retaliation to avoid enforcing safety rules themselves, something they shouldn’t have to do in the first place. Service workers need OSHA agencies, whose jobs are to step in to enforce safety regulations.
But in South Carolina, their statewide OSHA plan is not doing its job, workers say. As USSW reports in their complaint, “SC OSHA neglects key industries whose workforce is 42% [Black] employees while focusing the vast majority of its programmed inspections on industries made up of only 18% [Black] workers.”
In conjunction with their complaint, USSW workers went on a one-day strike across three states—Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina—yesterday to fight the dangerous trend of unsafe service industry workplaces.
From Here to Equality by William A. Darity, Jr., and A. Kristen Mullen (University of North Carolina Press, 2020)
This year represents a pivotal moment in U.S. history and presents a unique opportunity to explore the primary cause behind its great wealth. In August 1619, about 20 enslaved Africans aboard an English ship called “White Lion” arrived from present-day Angola on the shores of what is now Hampton, Virginia. Over the next three centuries, multitudes of enslaved Africans would go on to endure some of the most oppressive, degrading and inhumane treatment in world history under the rule of U.S. law, while helping build the economic foundation that would allow the United States to become one of the wealthiest countries.
On July 4, 1776, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed into law, thus declaring the original 13 colonies free from British rule and paving the way for the formation of the United States of America. July 4, 2022, marked the 246th anniversary of this document. What cannot be overlooked is the amount of time that has passed between July 1776 and now: 246 years and three months. In the meantime, slavery in United States officially began in August 1619 and was legally abolished on December 18, 1865, due to the 13th Amendment. From August 1619 to December 18, 1865, is a timespan of 246 years and four months. That means that the institution of slavery in the United States is one month older than the country’s history as a state free from British rule.
The nearly equidistant relationship between the duration of slavery and the history of the United States as a “free nation” is relevant for several reasons. History is essentially the study of events that have taken place over a given time-period. Some people seek to minimize U.S. slavery’s economic and social impact by pushing it into the distant past. When Joe Biden was running for the U.S. presidency in 2020, his remarks from the 1970s about reparations resurfaced: “I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” At the time, the United States was barely 100 years removed from slavery. The issue with his declaration is it not only lacks a factual foundation. It also goes against the wartime order of “40 acres and a mule” that Union General William Tecumseh Sherman made in 1865 during the Civil War. Following his presidential victory in 1865, Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation that reversed Sherman’s attempt to redistribute land to former slaves. Nearly all the land redistributed during the war was restored to its pre-war white owners.
What makes From Here to Equality (2020) poignant is its ability to effectively quantify the economic and social impact of slavery, while elucidating a simple and just solution: Reparations. The book begins with Darity and Mullen highlighting initial attempts for reparations by Black activists like Frederick Douglass, Callie D. Guy House and others following the aftermath of slavery. In 1898, House joined forces with Isaiah Dickerson to charter the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association (MRBP) in Nashville, Tennessee. According to Darity and Mullen (pg. 24), the MRBP’s mission was four-fold:
“identify ex-slaves and add their names to the petition for a pension;
lobby Congress to provide pensions for the nation’s estimated 1.9 million ex-slaves—21 percent of all African-Americans by 1899;
start local chapters and provide members with financial assistance when they became incapacitated by illness; and
provide a burial assistance payment when the member died.”
However, many people within the U.S. government felt threatened by the organization’s push for reparations.
As a result, House was convicted and jailed for almost a year due to claims that (pg. 25) “they (MRBP) had obtained money from the formerly enslaved by fraudulent circulars proclaiming that pensions and reparations were forthcoming.” The practice of U.S. government officials interfering with organizations that seek the liberation of Black people would continue well into the 1900s. Black leaders like Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others would all experience U.S. government repression. In 1999, the U.S. government was found guilty of conspiring to assassinate Dr. King.
From Here to Equality effectively articulates the relationship between slavery and the extreme wealth gap that exists between Black people and white people. (pg. 26)
“It is important to acknowledge that whites control political and economic power in this country. No shift in the power relationship will be possible unless the society as a whole takes action to transform the structural conditions to make racial equality a real possibility. Given the existing distribution of financial and real resources, blacks cannot close the racial wealth gap by independent and autonomous action.”
According to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances, “median black household net worth ($17,600) is only one-tenth of white net worth ($171,000).” The main reason is because after slavery ended, no lasting reparations were given to Black people in the form of land or wealth. Therefore, the myth that Black people can close the wealth gap through “hard work and determination” is completely illogical.
From Here to Equality is unlike any other book written about slavery, its impact on the global economy, and what’s owed to the descendants of slaves. The present moment represents a unique opportunity for the U.S. government to earnestly reckon with one of the greatest sins of its past and implement a reparations program that can help repair the conditions of Black people in the United States. Darity and Mullen close out their work by introducing (pg. 487) “several compelling calculations for monetary restitution.”
One of the more conservative estimates shows that each eligible Black descendant of U.S. slavery is owed $267,000. While H.R. 40, the 2021 congressional bill that establishes the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans is a step in the right direction, significant pressure should be applied to not only Congress but all politicians to ensure that reparations are paid out to the Black descendants of U.S. slavery.
Timothy Harun is a writer and actor based in Los Angeles. He holds a B.A. in journalism from Hampton University.
Kenyan migrant workers gather on January 11 at their country’s consulate in Beirut to demand repatriation / credit: Middle East Eye / Matt Kynaston
KIENI, Kenya—After traversing rivers, hills, valleys, sharp bends, and swaths of uncultivated land in the drier parts of central Kenya, this reporter arrived in early November to hear Anne Nyambura’s story of abuse at the hands of a Saudi employer.
Nyambura is a 53-year-old mother of five. In 2018, she traveled to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, with the promise of being able to send money back home with what she would earn as a domestic worker. But unable to withstand the working conditions, she breached the contract after a year.
“I was allowed to eat for only five minutes, given a lot of work and paid peanuts, contrary on what we had agreed on the contract,” the former domestic worker said. In Saudi Arabia, Nyambura expected to take home $800 per month. Instead, she received $170, or less than 25 percent of the agreed-upon amount. Meanwhile, the same role in Kenya would have earned her $150 each month. And, so, she returned to her homeland emaciated and poorer than before.
“It was a waste of time,” said Nyambura, who is among 100,000 Kenyans who have traveled to the Gulf countries to work, but whose dreams of earning to support their families have placed them in dangerous circumstances.
The International Domestic Workers Federation held a demonstration on June 6, 2014, in front of the United Nations regarding migrant workers’ rights in Qatar / credit: Fish / IDWF
‘Biting Poverty’ Feeds Kafala System
Now back in the Kieni constituency in Kenya’s Nyeri County, Nyambura told Toward Freedom she had nowhere to report the dispute with her Saudi employer because the decades-old Kafala system was at work.
Gulf Cooperation Council states, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Arab states of Jordan and Lebanon have abided by the Kafala system to regulate the relationships of migrant workers with employers (“kafeels”), according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). It has been in place since the 1950s. That is when countries that had experienced a construction boom after discovering oil under their feet needed skilled laborers that they could not find among their lesser educated populations. However, migrant workers have for years aired complaints about the system. “Often the kafeel exerts further control over the migrant worker by confiscating their passport and travel documents, despite legislation in some destination countries that declares this practice illegal,” the ILO states in a policy brief.
Nyambura told Toward Freedom her employer did exactly that, plus took hold of her identification card and mobile phone, among other items.
“The issue of documents being confiscated by the employers is under Saudi Arabian law and we cannot be blamed for that,” said Mwalimu Mwaguzo, a chairperson of the Pwani Welfare Association (PWA), an alliance of 20 private recruitment agencies based in the coastal city of Mombasa. “The Kafala system that people are complaining about was introduced with the Saudi Arabian government to curb running away of domestic workers from their employer and we, as agents, have no authority to eliminate the system.”
But that is not all, according to Nyambura.
“The employer was everything and you, as a worker, have nowhere to take him in case of assault,” she told Toward Freedom, lamenting that sometimes she would get slaps and blows from the employer and that she was denied food for a couple of days.
“Biting poverty fueled by lack of opportunities is compelling many Kenyan women to travel to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to search for greener pastures, but reaching there many regret,” she said in a low, angry tone. “Returning home becomes an added burden.”
Making matters worse, at least 89 Kenyans—most of whom were domestic workers—died in Saudi Arabia between 2020 and 2021, according to Kenyan Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau. Their bodies were returned to Kenya or buried as unknown persons in Gulf countries. Plus, organs had been removed from some of the bodies, Kamau reported.
Mwaguzo told Toward Freedom detainees in Saudi deportation centers are either on the run from their employer or are involved in prostitution.
Remittances Flow to Kenya
According to the ILO, the migration and employment system implemented by most countries in the Arab states region is based on a relatively liberal entry policy, restricted rights, and a limited duration of employment contracts and visas.
Kafeels are liable for the conduct and safety of the migrant they bring into the country, and they can exert control over a migrant’s movement and employment.
The ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR), which is responsible for evaluating the application of international labor standards, has noted “the kafala system may be conducive to the exaction of forced labor and has requested that the governments concerned protect migrant workers from abusive practices.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty International has said the situation in Qatar had worsened as it prepared to host the 2022 World Cup using migrant labor.
According to an article published by Global Policy Journal, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) estimates more than 2.1 million workers in the Gulf from around the world are at risk of exploitation and work under inhumane conditions. In the past, some countries had halted deployment of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia. Such bans improved working conditions, increased salaries and lessened mistreatment.
If the governments of Kenya and other countries halted to deploy their workers in the Gulf, could things change?
Migration to the Gulf continues providing thousands of job opportunities and billions of dollars in remittances. Around $124 billion was remitted in 2017 from countries that adhere to Kafala. Statistics from Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) show remittances from Saudi Arabia have more than doubled in the last two years to Ksh 22.65 billion ($179 million). That amount was sent back home in the first eight months of this year, ranking the Gulf nation as the third-largest source of remittances for Kenya behind the United Kingdom and the United States. However, 2021 remittances marked the fastest growth, with a 144 percent climb since 2020.
Reports of Rape and Torture
As the country continues enjoying remittances from the Gulf, Haki Africa, a human-rights organization headquartered in Mombasa, estimates more than 200,000 Kenyans in Saudi Arabia are working in different companies and homes, and that most are working under inhumane conditions. The organization’s estimate is double that of the Kenyan’s government’s.
Haki Africa Executive Director Hussein Khalid said the Kenyan embassy in Saudi Arabia has been ignoring complaints, fueling the vice.
Khalid said most of the Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia have undergone sexual assault, physical abuse and mental torture. He said, this year alone, the organization has received 51 complaints from domestic workers in Saudi Arabia.
“We would like to urge the government of Kenya to speed up the rescue process for our women who are suffering in Gulf countries and return them home,” Khalid said. “It is the responsibility of any government to ensure that all of its citizens are safe regardless where they are.”
Joy Simiyu, a former domestic worker from Bungoma in rural western Kenya, said her Gulf-based agent declined to speak with her when she needed help. Simiyu’s employer in Saudi Arabia only allowed her to sleep four hours and eat one meal per day. Plus, the terms of the contract weren’t being abided. “[After] reaching Riyadh, I was forced to work for the relatives of the employer.”
She said one day her employer attempted to kill her, but she was able to run away and report the matter to the nearest police station. Then she was then taken to an accommodation center, a location the Saudi government runs to keep migrants before they are deported or while they are looking for work after fleeing another employer.
Now based in Nairobi, the 24-year-old revealed the accommodation center was insecure, as she learned potential employers who visited the site would sexually assault women using the promise of a job. Food, water and electricity were unavailable, too, she said.
“I would like to urge my fellow Kenyans not to go to Saudi Arabia to look for jobs, things are not good there, you better suffer in your country than in other people’s country,” she said with tears rolling down her face. “What is in Saudi Arabia is slavery and not job opportunities.”
Recruitment Agencies: ‘Mother of All Problems’
In July 2021, when appearing before the Labor and Social Welfare Committee, then-Labor Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui reported 1,908 distress calls from the Gulf between 2019 and 2021.
While in the Gulf, Nyambura observed governments taking action when workers from different countries contacted them about mistreatment.
“Kenyans in the Gulf are like orphans,” Nyambura said. “They have no one to protect them.
However, the Kenyan government lately appears to be taking action. A few weeks ago, Cabinet Secretary for Foreign and Diaspora Affairs Dr. Alfred Mutua traveled to Riyadh to discuss the domestic-worker issue with Saudi officials. Mutua said the two agreed Kenyan domestic-worker agencies could set up offices in Saudi Arabia to deal with issues concerning their clients. The two countries announced they are collaborating to “flush out” illegal agencies and those that break the law.
“We have to break the cartels and streamline the agencies, some of which are owned by prominent Kenyans,” Mutua told the media. He added his ministry will release a set of new instructions and procedures prospective migrant workers will be required to adhere to and meet before they can be cleared to travel to the Gulf states. The foreign ministry reported hundreds of Kenyans have been repatriated. Mutua and his Saudi counterpart agreed to the formation of a hotline (+96 6500755060) that Kenyan workers can call to report abuse.
Meanwhile, in February, the Qatari government shut down 12 recruitment agencies. The operation came a few days after Central Organization of Trade Union (COTU) Secretary General Francis Atwoli and Qatar Labor Minister Ali Marri held talks in Doha. It is part of a campaign Atwoli is involved in that also has been putting pressure on the governments of Kenya and Saudi Arabia.
Atwoli told Toward Freedom recruitment agencies must be prohibited, calling them the “mother of all problems” facing workers.
“The issue of negotiations on the terms and conditions of workers should be government to government, and not [on] the recruitment agencies,” he told Toward Freedom.
Meanwhile, recruitment agencies oppose the ban of agencies. For instance, Maimuna Hassan of Nairobi-based Asali Commercial Agencies said many people do not talk about the benefits of working through recruitment agencies. Haki Africa Rapid Response Officer Mathias Sipeta urged those aspiring to travel to the Gulf through recruitment agencies to verify them before signing agreements.
Nyambura said Atwoli has been trying to fight for workers’ rights in the Gulf, but that he gets sidetracked by Kenyan politics. She also said he lacks support from the government.
Like Simiyu, Nyambura has concluded it is better to work in Kenya. She pointed to the country’s coffee and tea farms as better options. But seeing for the first time in Kenyan history both a government official and a labor leader holding meetings with Gulf state officials has indicated to some, like Nyambura, that the situation may improve.
“Maybe under the new administration,” the former domestic worker said, “things will change.”
Shadrack Omuka is a freelance journalist based in Kenya. He writes about human rights, climate change, business and education, among other topics. His work has appeared in several publications around the world, such as Equal Times, Financial Mail, New Internationalist, Earth Island and The Continent, among others.
A Saharawi refugee camp in the Tindouf province of Algeria / credit: European Commission DG ECHO
Editor’s Note: The following represents the writer’s analysis about a disputed area known as “Western Sahara” and was produced byGlobetrotter.
In November 2020, the Moroccan government sent its military to the Guerguerat area, a buffer zone between the territory claimed by the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The Guerguerat border post is at the very southern edge of Western Sahara along the road that goes to Mauritania. The presence of Moroccan troops “in the Buffer Strip in the Guerguerat area” violated the 1991 ceasefire agreed upon by the Moroccan monarchy and the Polisario Front of the Sahrawi. That ceasefire deal was crafted with the assumption that the United Nations would hold a referendum in Western Sahara to decide on its fate; no such referendum has been held, and the region has existed in stasis for three decades now.
Map of the disputed Western Sahara, with a red pin marking the location of Guerguerat, a town on the border with Mauritania / credit: Google
In mid-January 2022, the United Nations sent its Personal Envoy for Western Sahara, Staffan de Mistura, to Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania to begin a new dialogue “toward a constructive resumption of the political process on Western Sahara.” De Mistura was previously deputed to solve the crises of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; none of his missions have ended well and have mostly been lost causes. The UN has appointed five personal envoys for Western Sahara so far—including De Mistura—beginning with former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III, who served from 1997 to 2004. De Mistura, meanwhile, succeeded former German President Horst Köhler, who resigned in 2019. Köhler’s main achievement was to bring the four main parties—Morocco, the Polisario Front, Algeria and Mauritania—to a first roundtable discussion in Geneva in December 2018: this roundtable process resulted in a few gains, where all participants agreed on “cooperation and regional integration,” but no further progress seems to have been made to resolve the issues in the region since then. When the UN put forward De Mistura’s nomination to this post, Morocco had initially resisted his appointment. But under pressure from the West, Morocco finally accepted his appointment in October 2021, with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita welcoming him to Rabat on January 14. De Mistura also met the Polisario Front representative to the UN in New York on November 6, 2021, before meeting other representatives in Tindouf, Algeria, at Sahrawi refugee camps in January. There is very little expectation that these meetings will result in any productive solution in the region.
Abraham Accords
In August 2020, the United States government engineered a major diplomatic feat called the Abraham Accords. The United States secured a deal with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates to agree to a rapprochement with Israel in return for the United States making arms sales to these countries, as well as for the United States legitimizing Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara. The arms deals were of considerable amounts—$23 billion worth of weapons to the UAE and $1 billion worth of drones and munitions to Morocco. For Morocco, the main prize was that the United States—breaking decades of precedent—decided to back its claim to the vast territory of Western Sahara. The United States is now the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.
When President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, it was expected that he might review parts of the Abraham Accords. However, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear during his meeting with Bourita in November 2021 that the U.S. government would continue to maintain the position taken by the previous Trump administration that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara. The United States, meanwhile, has continued with its arms sales to Morocco, but has suspended weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates.
Phosphates
By the end of November 2021, the government of Morocco announced that it had earned $6.45 billion from the export of phosphate from the kingdom and from the occupied territory of Western Sahara. If you add up the phosphate reserves in this entire region, it amounts to 72 percent of the entire phosphate reserves in the world (the second-highest percentage of these reserves is in China, which has around 6 percent). Phosphate, along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer, a key element in modern food production. While nitrogen is recoverable from the air, phosphates, found in the soil, are a finite reserve. This gives Morocco a tight grip over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is not merely about national pride, but it is largely about the presence of a vast number of resources—especially phosphates—that can be found in the territory.
Detailed map of Western Sahara, showing borders with Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania / credit: Kmusser, based primarily on the Digital Chart of the World, with UN map and commercial atlases (Rand McNally, Google, Encarta, and National Geographic) used as references
In 1975, a UN delegation that visited Western Sahara noted that “eventually the territory will be among the largest exporters of phosphate in the world.” While Western Sahara’s phosphate reserves are less than those of Morocco, the Moroccan state-owned firm OCP SA has been mining the phosphate in Western Sahara and manufacturing phosphate fertilizer for great profit. The most spectacular mine in Western Sahara is in Bou Craa, from which 10 percent of OCP SA’s profits come; Bou Craa, which is known as “the world’s longest conveyor belt system,” carries the phosphate rock more than 60 miles to the port at El Aaiún. In 2002, the UN’s Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs at that time, Hans Corell, noted in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.” An international campaign to prevent the extraction of the “conflict phosphate” from Western Sahara by Morocco has led many firms around the world to stop buying phosphate from OCP SA. Nutrien, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the United States that used Moroccan phosphates, decided to stop imports from Morocco in 2018. That same year, the South African court challenged the right of ships carrying phosphate from the region to dock in their ports, ruling that “the Moroccan shippers of the product had no legal right to it.”
Only three known companies continue to buy conflict phosphate mined in Western Sahara: Two from New Zealand (Ballance Agri-Nutrients Limited and Ravensdown) and one from India (Paradeep Phosphates Limited).
Human Rights
After the 1991 ceasefire, the UN set up a Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). This is the only UN peacekeeping force that does not have a mandate to report on human rights. The UN made this concession to appease the Kingdom of Morocco. The Moroccan government has tried to intervene several times when the UN team in Western Sahara attempted to make the slightest noise about the human rights violations in the region. In March 2016, the kingdom expelled MINURSO staff because then-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the Moroccan presence in Western Sahara as an “occupation.”
Pressure from the United States is going to ensure that the only realistic outcome of negotiations is for continued Moroccan control of Western Sahara. All parties involved in the conflict are readying for battle. Far from peace, the Abraham Accords are going to accelerate a return to war in this part of Africa.
