Washington Post December 13, 2020: Last week, President Trump formally recognized Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara as part of a deal to get Morocco to normalize relations with Israel. But Morocco’s claim on Western Sahara is rejected by the United Nations, the World Court, the African Union and a broad consensus of international legal scholars that consider the region a non-self-governing territory that must be allowed an act of self-determination. This is why no country had formally recognized Morocco’s takeover — until now…
Category: United Nations
united-nations
The East Timor Model Offers a Way out for Western Sahara and Morocco
Foreign Policy Dec. 9, 2020 – It’s not often that Western Sahara makes international headlines, but in mid-November it did: Nov. 14 marked the tragic—if unsurprising—breakup of a tenuous, 29-year cease-fire in Western Sahara between the occupying Moroccan government and pro-independence fighters. The outbreak of violence is concerning not only because it flew in the face of nearly three decades of relative stasis, but also because Western governments’ reflexive response to the resurgent conflict may be to upend—and thereby hamper and delegitimize for perpetuity over 75 years of established international legal principles…
Stephen Zunes’ Testimony before the UN conference on decolonization
freedomsupport June 29, 2016: My interest in the dispute over Western Sahara is based not simply upon my belief in justice for that country’s people, but its implications in regard to international law and the principles upon which the United Nations organization is founded. These include the right of self-determination…
Morocco continues occupation of Western Sahara, in defiance of UN
National Catholic Reporter June 6, 2016: As Morocco continues to defy the UN, the International Court of Justice, and much of the international community in its continued occupation of Western Sahara, the United States continues supporting that autocratic government.
Africa’s Last Colony: Western Saharan Independence Movement Mourns Loss of Polisario Front Leader
Obama administration undermines UN disarmament efforts
National Catholic Reporter April 13, 2015
Though the United States may have taken the lead in the international diplomatic initiative against Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration has also taken the lead in undermining the United Nations’ efforts to promote nuclear arms control and disarmament elsewhere…
Interview: Commentary on the OPCW and the Nobel Peace Prize
Institute for Public Accuracy October 27, 2013
Nobel Prize for OPCW: Examining Both Organizations,
Institute for Public Accuracy October 11, 2013
STEPHEN ZUNES, Professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, wrote the piece “The U.S. and Chemical Weapons: No Leg to Stand On.”Syria and the likely disastrous consequences that would have resulted.”
Interview: Chemical Weapons Watchdog Wins Nobel Peace Prize as U.S. Opposes Calls for WMD-Free Middle East (Video)
Democracy Now October 11, 2013; Video & Transcript
As the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons wins the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, we look at international efforts to rid Syria and other countries — including the United States — of chemical weapons. Transcript
What Obama Didn’t Say in his UN Speech
The Progressive September 24, 2013
[Republished by Common Dreams and PeaceandJustice.org]
President Obama addressed Russian and Chinese obstructionism on Syria. Their abuse of veto power has, in the words of U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, held the Security Council “hostage.” But the President wasn’t willing to acknowledge U.S. obstructionism and abuse of its own veto power…
Divesting from All Occupations
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies July 25, 2012.
Republished by Transnational.org et al.
In response to ongoing violations of international law and basic human rights by the rightist Israeli government of Benyamin Netanyahu in the occupied West Bank and elsewhere, there has been a growing call for divestment of stocks in corporations supporting the occupation… Still, the campaign has scored notable successes…
Obama, Palestine, and the United Nations
Tikkun magazine, March 2, 2012: For the Palestinian Authority to win UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, it would have to overcome major hurdles presented by the Obama administration. Back in 1948, Israel achieved its independence through a U.S.-backed UN General Assembly resolution. Credit: Ramzy Taweel (Cartoon Movement). For those of us who hoped that President Barack Obama would usher in a new era supporting international law, the United Nations, and Israeli-Palestinian peace, 2011 proved to be a profoundly disappointing year.
[Also archived at Duke University Press]
US Outrage Over Syria Veto at UN Rife With Hypocrisy
Truthout, February 8, 2012, also by The Israel Palestine Project
Official Washington has been rife with condemnation at the decision by the governments of Russia and China to veto an otherwise unanimous UN Security Council resolution condemning the ongoing repression in Syria and calling for a halt to violence on all sides; unfettered access for Arab League monitors; and “a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system, in which citizens are equal regardless of their affiliations or ethnicities or beliefs.” Human rights activists were outraged…
Syrian Repression, the Chinese-Russian Veto, and U.S. Hypocrisy
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, February 7, 2012
Also Eurasia Review, Global Policy Focus, Middle East Spectator, The Indypendent, Democratic Underground, Mulay Smara, Alternatives International Journal and Transnational Blog
Just as France shields Morocco from accountability for its ongoing occupation and repression in Western Sahara, and just as the U.S. shields Israel from having observe international humanitarian law, Russia and China have used their permanent seats on the UN Security Council to protect the Syrian regime from accountability for its savage repression against its own citizens. Although inexcusable, the self-righteous reaction by U.S. officials betrays hypocrisy on a grand scale…
Answering Obama’s UN Address
September 30, 2011. Source is no longer available.
Although his September 21 address before the UN General Assembly contained a number of positive elements, in many ways it also contained many of the same kind of duplicitous and misleading statements one would have expected from his predecessor. Excerpts below…
Obama’s Veto on Israeli Settlements Demonstrates Contempt for International Humanitarian Law
Huffington Post March 21, 2011
The US veto of a mildly worded UN Security Council resolution supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and reiterating the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied territories leaves little doubt that… Obama shares his predecessor’s contempt for international law. All fourteen of the other members of the Security Council voted for the resolution — which was cosponsored by a nearly unprecedented majority of UN members…
The Gaza War, Congress and International Humanitarian Law
Middle East Policy Council April 16, 2010; also Institute for Palestine Studies, ResearchGate, Typeset.io & Wiley
The large-scale killing of civilians during Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09 received widespread condemnation from human-rights advocates and international legal scholars the world over. In both Europe and North America, public reaction to the grossly disproportionate Israeli response to Hamas rocket attacks was the most negative ever expressed against an Israeli military action. In Israel itself, soldiers who had witnesses some of the atrocities joined Israeli peace activists in exposing war crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). However, the U.S. Congress, under the leadership of the Democratic Party, overwhelmingly defended the Israeli offensive, even to the point of attacking leading defenders of international humanitarian law. [source]
Obama and the Denial of Genocide
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, March 11, 2010; also Armenian National institute, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, CommonDreams, History of Macedonia, & Huffington Post: The Obama administration, citing its relations with Turkey, has pledged to block the passage in the full House of Representatives of a resolution passed this past Thursday by the Foreign Relations Committee acknowledging the 1915 genocide by the Ottoman Empire of a 1.5 million Armenians. Even though the Obama administration previously refused to acknowledge and even worked to suppress well-documented evidence of recent war crimes by Israel, another key Middle Eastern ally, few believed that the administration would go as far as to effectively deny genocide. [source]
Bipartisan Attack on International Humanitarian Law
Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies,
November 4, 2009 by Stephen Zunes; also at Alternet
In a stunning blow against international law and human rights, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution Tuesday attacking the report of the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict. The report was authored by the well-respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone and three other noted authorities on international humanitarian law, who had been widely praised for taking leadership in previous investigations of war crimes in Rwanda, Darfur, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. Since this report documented apparent war crimes by a key U.S. ally, however, Congress has taken the unprecedented action of passing a resolution condemning it… [source]
Missing an Anti-Racism Moment
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS April 22, 2009, by Stephen Zunes
In boycotting the United Nations conference on racism, the Obama administration demonstrated that just because an African American can be elected president doesn’t mean the United States will be any more committed than the Bush administration in fighting global racism. Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration instead gave into pressure by Congressional hawks and other anti-UN forces by joining a handful of other nations refusing to participate in the historic gathering. [source]
Western Sahara: Self-Determination and International Law
Middle East Institute, April 2, 2008 by Stephen Zunes [source]
The failure of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front to agree on the modalities of the long-planned United Nations-sponsored referendum on the fate of Western Sahara, combined with a growing nonviolent resistance campaign within the territory against Morocco’s 31-year occupation, has led Morocco to propose granting the former Spanish colony special autonomous status within the kingdom. The plan has received the enthusiastic support of the American and French governments…