The Sahrawis for Peace Movement Participates in United Nations Sessions on the Sahara
Address by Hach Ahmed, First Secretary of the Sahrawis for Peace Movement (MSP), to the UN’s Fourth Committee on the Sahara
Full address by Hach Ahmed Bericalla, first secretary of the Sahrawis for Peace Movement (MSP), during the United Nations Fourth Committee session regarding the new resolution on Morocco’s Autonomy Plan for the Western Sahara proposed by the North African country in 2007.
“Mr. President,
It is a pleasure for me to address this Committee for the first time on behalf of the Sahrawis for Peace Movement (MSP), an authentically Sahrawi political organization, born five years ago as an expression of the weariness and frustration of our people after half a century of suffering.
We are not the voice of the Polisario, nor of Morocco, nor of any other actor or neighboring country in the region. We are Sahrawis tired of war and exile, but also the voice of those who still believe in a future of peace.
For more than fifty years, our people have lived trapped between confrontation and uncertainty: divided families, young people without a horizon, children born under tarpaulins, elders dying far from their land.
Every death, every life lost in war or in exile is an open wound and a reminder that we have failed: we, as victims and actors in the conflict, and also the international community, which thirty years ago promised a peaceful solution that never arrived.
Today we have not come to repeat slogans or to get entangled in irreconcilable positions that have monopolized the debate in this committee for decades. We come to propose another way: that of dialogue, coexistence, and commitment.
A way that rejects maximalism, because we know that intransigence and radicalism —like weapons and walls— never bring freedom or prosperity.
Our voice is that of the elders who dream in silence of returning before they die; that of the young people who refuse to inherit an endless exile; and that of the mothers who wish to raise their children under a sky of peace and freedom, not under the shadow of a rifle or another artifact of death.
Many of us have decided to put an end to this long and arduous journey to nowhere, to close the cycle of confrontation and open the cycle of hope, whatever the cost, because, as Erasmus of Rotterdam said six centuries ago:
‘The peace, even if imperfect, is always better than a just war.’
We do not aspire to glory or a place in history books. We only ask for the opportunity to contribute to a peaceful solution and to ensure that our people live, at last, with dignity on their land.
Peace is not an impossible dream. It only requires courage and sincere will.
Today, therefore, we come to extend our hand with humility and firmness, convinced that reconciliation between Sahrawis and Moroccans is not a concession, but a duty towards our people and towards the future of the entire region.
The Sahrawis for Peace Movement is a new, realistic, and constructive partner for the United Nations in its effort to help Sahrawis and Moroccans write a new history of peace and coexistence in the Sahara and throughout Northwest Africa.
Help us to open this path!”
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