 Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Carolina and I'm a sophomore at Tufts and on the board of the Tufts Middle East Research Group. Thank you so much for joining this exciting panel as we close out the week and the end of the Tufts spring semester. Today's panel is hosted by the Tufts Middle East Research Group, a collaborative research group studying the Middle East and North Africa. We are part of the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership. Today's panel features activists and academics who will speak about the various legal, political, and economic dimensions of the Western Sahara conflict. The conflict has largely been defined by Morocco's relationship with neighboring countries and international actors, yet has also long been ignored or overlooked. We're joined today by Professor Steven Zunes. Steven Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. He's the co-author of Western Sahara War, Nationalism and Conflict E-Resolution. Pristhanum is a professor emeritus of international law at the Fletcher School. His focus is on human rights and its role in the international legal and political order, including in particular issues of self-determination, minority rights, and conflict resolution. His scholarly work has been complimented by service as consultant advisor to a number of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, including the UN High Commission, NERF for Human Rights and Department of Political Affairs. We're also joined by Nazha El Khalidi. Nazha is a Sahrawi journalist and activist. She is a member of Akip Media and is covering the human rights situation in Western Sahara. Eric Hagen is a board member of Western Sahara Resource Watch and director of the Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara. He has followed the matter of natural resources in Western Sahara for about 20 years and published a book about this topic in 2018. He has a background as an investigative journalist and geographer. I'll now turn it over to Izzy. Hi, everyone. My name is Isbel Rosenbaum. I'm a senior and events coordinator at Merge. Thank you for joining us today. I'll give a brief overview of the structure of the panel. Each panelist will have about eight minutes to speak and present. We will start with Professor Zunz and then move to Professor Hanem. And then Nazha El Khalidi will speak and then we'll have Eric Hagen. We will then have around 20 minutes or so for questions and answers. For all participants, you're very welcome to send questions at any point during the presentations but all questions will be answered at the end. Also, please do not use the chat feature of your questions. Please use the Q and A, which you'll find on the same row on Zoom. And again, send the questions at any point and they'll be answered at the end. And with that, I'll turn it over to Professor Zunz. Hello, once again, my name's Stephen Zunis. I'm at the University of San Francisco and for many years I've been looking at the situation of Western Sahara, which is the international community recognizes as a case of incomplete decolonization. That is a colony, a colony that's been denied its right to self-determination, which according to international law, all colonized people have a right to do so. And the Western Sahara is a largely desert territory about the size of Colorado, immediately south of Morocco on the Atlantic coast. And this international consensus about its status and the illegality of Morocco's invasion, occupation and annexation of that territory was challenged this past December when President Donald Trump recognized Morocco's illegal annexation. This is in direct defiance of the whole series of UN Security Council resolutions and landmark a world court ruling calling for self-determination. As with the Trump's earlier recognition of Israel's illegal annexation of Syria's Golan Heights, Trump has effectively renounced the longstanding international legal principles for self-determination in favor of the right of conquest. And the fact that Biden, despite being in office for a number of months now and despite reversing a number of other troubling actions by the Trump administration, has not rescinded this annexation. The maps of the US Embassy and Rabat still show Western Sahara as part of Morocco. And there's little sign that he will be reversing this and that could change depending on political pressure, but this is very troubling because unlike the Golan, which is only a small part of a country, we're talking about the annexation of an entire nation which has been recognized as an independent state by no less than 80 countries. And since Western Sahara is a full member of the African Union, the United States is essentially endorsing the conquest of one recognized African state by another. And it was the prohibition of such territorial conquests enshrined in the United Nations Charter which the United States insisted had to be held by launching the Gulf War in 1991, reversing Iraq's conquest and illegal annexation of Kuwait. Now the United States is saying, well, having an Arab country invade annexed a small Southern neighbor is okay after all, at least if it's a US ally. The Charter of the African Union and prior to that the Organization of African Unity was quite explicit in saying no matter how arbitrary colonial boundaries may be, they cannot be changed without mutual agreement. But now thanks to the US recognition, African countries with irredentist ambitions know that they can have the support of the most powerful nation in the world should they choose to do so. I should note though that while the exact boundaries of Western Sahara are somewhat arbitrary, the Sahrawis are distinct from most Moroccans in terms of their dialect, their dress, their food, the role of women which is much more progressive than in Morocco. The current US position is that Morocco's so-called autonomy plan for the territory is serious, credible, and realistic. And then Trump's word is the only basis for a just and lasting solution, even though it falls way short of the international legal definition of autonomy and would simply continue the occupation. Human Rights Watch, Amsir National, and other human rights groups have documented widespread suppression by Moroccan occupation forces of peaceful advocates of independence, raising serious questions as to how genuine such autonomy under the kingdom would actually be. Indeed, Freedom House, in the report that was released just a few weeks ago, listed Western Sahara as one of the half dozen least free countries in the world, featuring a lack of rights on par with countries like North Korea and Uzbekistan. And I mean, yeah, this is an incredibly repressive country. Indeed, I've been to over 85 countries at this point, including Iraq, under Saddam, and Indonesia, and Saharta. I've never seen a worse police state than Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. And this autonomy proposal does not meet the legal definition of autonomy under international law. It's vague to what extent there'd be genuine autonomy and given all the promises Morocco's violated over the past 50 years. It's really, it is doubtful they would actually go through with it, but more fundamentally, the autonomy plan rules out the option of independence. I mean, if in a free and fair referendum, the Saharawi society prefer autonomy, that's fine. However, as an internationally recognized non-self-governing territory, international law is quite explicit. The independence must be an option. If the UN accepts the autonomy plan, it would be the first time since the signing, which the United States has been pushing them to do so. It would be the first time since signing the UN Charter with the possible exception of West Papua that the international community would recognize an incomplete decolonization. But Morocco has seen, United States has seen Morocco as an important regional ally, initially during the Cold War and struggle against communists and left-leaning nationalist governments and subsequently in the fight of Islamist extremists. And throughout this time, the US has been willing to overlook the legal and moral imperatives. The Polisario found the National Liberation Movement for Western Sahara, meanwhile, has counted primarily on the support of African Latin American and other countries of the global South. So the majority of the world, it really is on the side of self-determination, but the French and American veto threats at the UN Security Council have stymied efforts to place Western Sahara under Chapter 7, the United Nations Charter, which would give the international community the power to impose sanctions or other appropriate leverage on Morocco to force the country to abide by the UN mandates that has to date disregarded. Now, there has been bipartisan support in Congress for the occupation. There's also been bipartisan opposition. Though Trump sent this dangerous step of formally recognizing the annexation, the US has been quietly supporting it for many years under both Republican and Democratic administrations. I mean, similarly, analogy with Israeli occupation in the West Bank, as Trump went out and essentially, and recognized the annexation of these illegal settlements and the like. But we know that previously the United States was essentially supporting the occupation anyway by blocking the UN from enforcing resolutions, providing unconditional military aid, and instead pushing this ongoing peace process between where the occupying power clearly has the leverage over the ones under occupation, and which has allowed the occupiers to continue colonizing the occupied territories and consolidating their control. Indeed, Morocco has sent in settlers to Western Sahara to the point that they now outnumber the indigenous population. This has made the ongoing nonviolent struggle in the occupied territories more difficult. I'm a big believer in the power of strategic nonviolent action, but when foreigners are in your land and control most of the things, the possibility of general strikes and other kinds of effective nonviolent resistance are hard to keep up. The Polisario resumed the armed struggle just a few months ago, given the lack of the progress in the peace process and the failure of the international community to live up to its obligation, but I don't think the armed struggle is going to work either. Again, given the military superiority of the Moroccans and their foreign backers, that's why I think the real hope, the only hope really for the defend the post-war or two international legal order that allows expanding territories by force is wrong and you need to recognize the right of self-determination. It was if global civil society mobilizes, as we did against the Indonesian occupation of East Timor or the apartheid South Africa's occupation of Namibia there when there's campaigns of boycotts, divestment and sanctions and other pressures, essentially to shame our governments that are backing the occupiers from ending the occupation. That I think is the only real hope that there'll be justice and peace in Western Sahara. Great, thank you, Professors Eunice. And now we'd like to move to Professor Hannah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very often in these sorts of panels, I'm the dissenting voice that tries to correct what others have said, but I'm happy to say that in this case, Professor Nunes did a very good job of summarizing the international legal aspects of the situation. Self-determination can be an incredibly complicated issue because people read the words, all peoples have the right to self-determination and they apply it to almost every group that wants to govern itself. But the one thing that is clear that self-determination does mean, despite that broad language, is the right of former European colonies to be independent. That was what the era of decolonization was all about. That's a right that has been proclaimed and accepted as Professor Nunes said by everyone, although sometimes more quietly than other times. Clearly that was not the case. After Spain abandoned Western Sahara, Morocco and Mauritania partitioned it for a while and after that and after war, Morocco, which Morocco won by building a giant sand wall, a berm excluding about a quarter of the territory and taking the other three quarters to be part of Morocco. That clearly didn't happen in the case of Western Sahara. I was legal advisor to former US Secretary of State, James Baker for a couple of years in 2002, 2003 when he was preparing what is I think the date still the most reasonable peace plan for Western Sahara that was ultimately accepted at least as a basis of negotiation by Polisario, by the Sahrawi people and rejected by Morocco. The key to that plan was the recognition of the right of Western Sahara to be independent, not the obligation to be independent, but the right to have that as one of the options. And what the plan attempted to do was to balance that right, which was only a possibility because it was subject to a referendum with various other inducements from Morocco to think that they might have a chance of winning such a referendum. One of the problems in Western Sahara has always been because a referendum was always envisioned. Who can vote in the referendum? And so the peace plan adopted a fairly expansive view of who could vote. The peace plan also suggested that the world would recognize an interim autonomy and the right of Morocco to control foreign relations and security during that time prior to the envisioned referendum. How could Morocco possibly object to these things? Let me suggest the two ways at which they've tried and in both cases I think they failed. The first was to follow in the steps of India and China and Russia and well, not so much Kosovo, but in claiming that Western Sahara had always been a part of Morocco and it was simply stolen from Morocco by Spain and therefore should be returned to it in the same way that Macau and Hong Kong should have been returned and have been returned to China. Goa was invaded by India and no one objected very strongly. The problem with that argument is that the General Assembly way back in 1974, right after Spain announced its intention to withdraw from its colony, it asked the International Court of Justice, the World Court, what the legal relationship was between Western Sahara and Morocco. The court's decision was very clear and almost unanimous and let me just read you one of the final sentences of the court's opinion. It said, the court's conclusion is that the materials and information presented to it do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity. Thus, the court has not found legal ties of such a nature as might affect the decolonization of Western Sahara and in particular of the principle of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the territory. So the court rejected Morocco's argument that Western Sahara had been a part of Morocco and should have returned. The other Moroccan position, which is the one it is adopted now is that there is an alternative to independence and that is whatever is freely agreed to by the two parties. And they're clearly accurate about that. In addition to perhaps Western Papua, there's the case of Nui that is freely associated with Australia, the case of Puerto Rico in the United States is another example where the UN has approved such arrangements short of independence or short of full integration. And so autonomy is a perfectly viable alternative so long as it's with the preconcept of both parties. And of course, if your territory has been occupied for what is it now? Almost 50 years, that's not exactly, those are not exactly the conditions under which preconcept can be given. Well, then what happened to the UN when, because the UN has never formally rejected this notion that every colony has the right to be independent? When it received the proposal of Secretary Baker and this peace plan that envisaged a referendum on independence, it described the, it's conclusions as that it strongly supports the efforts of the Secretary General, supports the peace plan for self-determination of the people of Western Sahara. And this is the key as an optimum political solution on the basis of agreement between the two parties. So unlike every other colonial situation or almost everyone, where independence was the default solution didn't require a referendum of any kind. Ever since 1975, the UN Security Council has introduced this additional element which is an oxymoron in and of itself that self-determination should be conditioned on the agreement of Morocco and the agreement of the people of Western Sahara. Since that time, nothing has been achieved through decades of personal envoys and other attempts at achieving an agreed upon solution. And I wish I could be as optimistic as Professor Nunez that either sanctions or pressure could work in this case. But I think it's extremely unlikely. Certainly without a greater commitment of both the Sahawi and the Moroccans to finding a solution that would actually leave them both better off. This might in fact be autonomy within Morocco. I am not one who would trust the Moroccan government to a great extent, but one of the attempts in the peace plan was to have a five-year period where Morocco would have a certain degree of control to give them a chance to show the people of Western Sahara that they might be better off in a Morocco with a great degree of self-government. Unfortunately, that looks like it's unlikely to happen. If the armed conflict increases, if the Pulisario, the Sahrawi leadership decide to engage in terrorist acts within Morocco, then the Sahrawis will be certain to lose because terrorism, in addition to an economic outlook that is similar to that of the United States is the real reason, in my view, that the US has been so friendly with Morocco, which since 2001, coincidentally, only two years before the Baker plan has been one of our few allies in North Africa on the question of terrorism. We can talk about other possible ways forward so the stalemate doesn't continue indefinitely, but there has been no UN representative dealing directly with Western Sahara for the last two years since the last one resigned. And so it's very difficult. These days to find much space for any movement in the situation, and that's a very sad conclusion to have to reach. But I will, thank you. Thank you, professor. Now I'd like to turn to Nesha, please. Hello, hello everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me to this panel. So my name is Nesha Khalidi. I'm a part of Equip Media. It's a group of media activists who are working on documentation, the violation that is committed to the Moroccan occupying forces against Sahrawi people in the equi territory. I'm based in the capital of Western Sahara. And I would like to share like what we lived and what we witnessed in our country. So since Morocco invaded the territory in 1975, it was imposing and still imposing a totally media and military blockade. There are so many crimes against humanity that is committed to the occupation against Sahrawis. Morocco killed so many people during the invasion and after the invasion. Morocco kidnapped people for many, many years, killed them and tortured, and nobody talked about these crimes. So you can imagine from the 70s till 2009 when we established our group, Equip Media that is called Equip Media. It's an organization, but you might think that it's an organization without an office and like it's a real organization, but no, Equip Media, we are just people if you want to have a small meeting or normal meeting, simple meeting, we have to arrange it clandestinely without letting the Moroccan authorities know because they will surround our houses and arrest all the members of our organization. And by the way, all the members of our organization are former political prisoners, all of them have experienced the torture. And of course we know why because Morocco doesn't want any voice to be out from this territory that is closed for many, many years. No press agencies in the ground, no international organization that work in a documentation and Morocco is doing whatever they want. It wasn't like easy for us to like pass through a decade, almost a decade, we were working since like to now 10 years of work. We had so many difficulties inside and outside since we started to build like a network with organization that can take the information from us and use our reports and to be like a reliable resource for them. It wasn't easy because all the time we face the French lobby and of course the Moroccan propaganda outside and so many unfortunately organization and activists and like politicians are very supportive to the occupation and like just the occupation influence on them very easily. So they can take step back, they start working with us but then they just withdraw without any reasons, unfortunately, so it wasn't easy but we managed to bring so many also people who believe in humanity to work together with us and we build a network and now we have a small space in very important like newspapers outside and we have like a space in also some like organization that take the information we give them here. Unfortunately, the only like information that can be taken for us easily and I will explain how it is easy for us just documenting the protests in the streets but it's not easy. We cannot take the cameras in the ground, we have to find like a place is surrounded the place where the evidence is taking place and be in high these buildings in rooftops and filming hide in the cameras and trying to like be very careful to avoid to be arrested and the materials be confiscated by the police. If you want to do like more investigations, for example regarding the natural resources and we know that we pay the price of like being or living or being a people who is living in a land that is considered as one of the richest country in the world and because of that we are under the occupation and now and we are a victim of international conspiracy and fortunately, so if we want to do this kind of investigation, we cannot go for example to the companies that is exploiting our natural resources illegally, we cannot meet these people, we cannot be close to that area. All the workers in these companies are Moroccans, the Sahara we are not allowed to work in this kind of work and taking like being in this kind of position of work because they are afraid, the Moroccans are afraid from them to have like a sensitive informations that can help to expose the Moroccan illegal exploitation of our natural resources and the foreign companies that's stealing our natural resources. If you want to do investigation regarding like the political prisoners when we are not able to get informations from the trials because we are activists and we are already criminalized by the occupation and we are in the blacklist. So our move is really, really very limited. And this is affect our work a lot. This is affect the information we give to the people outside. That's why we call for a neutral side to be here, neutral organization, neutral press agency to be here to all documents and Morocco is refusing this because they know the importance and the power of the, of course and the voice of the picture. Morocco is still in spreading, still spreading the fake information about the wheel of the Sahrawi people. All Sahrawi are supporting the independence. And if you are talking about or asking why Morocco is refusing the self-determination, the answer is really, is very clear because Morocco understand and know that nobody in Western Sahara accept to be controlled by the Moroccan occupation because we live without dignity, we live within salt. And if we just speak one word, we are going to face jail. We are going to be in the custody and I'm here not talking about something like that I've never witnessed. I've been arrested several times. I'm a victim of torture. When I was 13 years old, I spent seven hours and they're tortured. I was arrested in 2016. I was arrested in 2018. I was subjected to a media defamation. Moroccan police still in my phone publishing badly about me, my personal picture, my photos just to stop my work. And so you can understand how is the situation for Sahrawi and just to explain, I mean to share with you like it's, we are not safe. Now we are trying to protect ourselves especially after the outbreak of the war in 13th of November after Morocco violated the ceasefire and the Morocco violated the ceasefire after a peaceful protest who came from the refugee camps to protest against a gap that is built illegally in a wall that is also humanitarian or a crime against humanity that's divide our country and our people that has more than 10 millions landmines and that affect the people. You know that we are nomadic people and the people are like moving outside of the city every time we hear about the people who died because of the mines that is built by Morocco together with the other countries who are already involved in this dirty, I mean game with Morocco in this dirty policies like the United States and France and Saudi Arabia and the others countries. So this gap it was illegally and it was, I mean exploited or Morocco was benefit from it by transportation or natural resources to the Africa. And we are asking how this can be convinced I mean to the people that Morocco is already building this wall and building this gap without nobody saying any words indeed like regarding the ceasefire agreements there were only four gaps in the wall that allow the United Nations to move but not this gap, not the garrad and Morocco targeted these protesters and of course the Polisario had the responsibility to save the lives of these protesters and that's why they restart the war unfortunately. We don't support any violence but all the people in Western Sahara are really happy with this new path and I really trust Polisario now after they raise their weapons and we feel so sorry that the things goes like that after being like waiting for many, many years for a peaceful solution since 1991, 30 years and just betrayed by the international community. And now we had the recognition from United States Trump recognition that's really disappointed for us but of course Sahara people believes in their fear rights and fear case and of course they will continue the struggle and we are exist in our country nobody can just throw out the people of Western Sahara from the map or from the earth we are exist, it take time Morocco's like playing to exploit more the natural resources and I mean benefits from the ongoing, I mean the conflict being like a prolonged conflict but still the people for over now 40 years still have the same demands, the independence and nothing except the independence. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Nacef for sharing your experiences. Now we'd like to move to Eric Hagen from Western Sahara Research Watch and Eric if you have something you'd like to screen share you should be able to do that right now. Yeah, I'll be fine without screen sharing we'll do it like this. So our association Brussels based international association we monitor the exploration, exploitation, exports of natural resources from Western Sahara to markets overseas. The work is based basically on again on the principle of self-determination that principle is very clear when it comes to non-self-governing territories and choosing their political future but it also applies to the people of a non-self-governing territory to manage their own resources. There's also another set of international law regarding laws of occupation what rights and occupying power has on occupied land and obligations they have. Within this framework we document those incidents, shipments, agreements that violate the right to self-determination or all of these resources. There's been an incredible development on this front since we started in 2005. Since 2015 there have been four consecutive decisions made by the Court of Justice of the European Union underlining that Morocco just like the Court of Justice which was mentioned of the International Court of Justice underlining that Morocco and Western Sahara are separate and distinct territories and any trade agreement by the European Union with Morocco cannot apply to Western Sahara. Unless the people has accepted it, unless there has been a recognition, a consent given by Western Sahara. This principle also applies to private businesses. They have to respect this principle. So our work consists in challenging writing to these companies involved and ask whether they have sort of obtained this consent. It's a very technical work. Our website, Western Sahara Resource Watch website, details everything that I'm saying now. There are several resources that are fundamental in understanding the Western Sahara conflict and how it develops. The first aspect is the phosphate trade. Phosphates was a very important commodity to understand also what happened in 1975. Morocco took very quickly control over the phosphate mines. It started exports. United States, let me have a little emphasis on the US role since this is a US initiative, this panel. United States remained from, I think already from the early 80s, Louisiana and the South States became very important in imports of phosphate rock for fertilizer production for the agriculture sector. This trade by the end of 2018, the American Canadian trade controlled by the same company constituted 50% of the phosphate imports. And that stopped in December 2018. So since then, there has been no North American involvement, which is very, very good news. The importers make reference to corporate responsibility when stopping the trade. There have been two different US importers in the recent years. The importer in Florida has specifically stated that we'd stopped because of the human rights concerned in Western Sahara. So there has been a set of responsible companies that found a way around this dilemma. This has basically cut the exports in half. So what used to be around two million tons of phosphate export is now down to one million tons. This is, we see this based on the size and the number of shipments. So we analyze basically the traffic. There are still some US involvement in this industry. There are a set of different law firms or audit firms in the United States that give legal advice and different sorts of advice to the Moroccan exporter on the ground. These documents, these opinions are always confidential. We do not know how they're made. They are supposedly also defending everything why this is legal, including why this is to the benefits of the local population and everything relating to the understanding of this is something that they actually want. But none of these opinions are public. We don't know the methodology, how they have assessed the status of the land, how they have assessed the status of Morocco on the land. None of these reports have been shared with the Saharawi people, yet they claim to support the Saharawi people. So this is of course a paradox. And these reports written by these US law firms or due diligence companies are fundamentally complicated in that they legitimize and greenwash the, or they give a good impression to the whole industry. There used to be a very strong participation regretfully of American oil companies in Western Sahara. That stopped in 2000 and it must have been 2015, 16, 16 I think. Oklahoma, Texas-based companies been going on since 2002 to 2015. Now they are out. This caused a lot of protests from the Saharawis both in the refugee camps and in the occupied territories. And finally they pulled out. What we then, instead of that, we have a concerning development on the renewable front. The Saharawis and ourselves, we were always very scared about what might happen to the dynamics of the conflict if Morocco finds oil in Western Sahara. Luckily they didn't for the conflict. But what happened in the meantime from 2012 is that Morocco built large, started the construction of large renewable energy production in Western Sahara, both solar and wind. This is growing very, very quickly. And there are many complicated aspects of that. One is that it ties Morocco through these electricity cables to Western Sahara, making Morocco depending on energy production in Western Sahara. Second, it will probably in the future make European Union depending on energy production in Western Sahara. Thirdly, these are companies owned by the Moroccan King doing it in partnership with European companies. It means that the King as a person becomes more involved in Western Sahara, which is also not good. And also it gives this impression of a Moroccan government being ethical and having a constructive approach to this, which they do not. The wind energy is also used for quite controversial businesses like the energy, 100% of the energy needed for the phosphate exports, where the phosphate mineral is just depleted from the territory, that comes from windmills. So it has this extra effect. There's one huge plan going on of a U.S. company called Saluna, which is going to build a massive wind farm in the southern part of the territory for the mining of bitcoins or for e-mining, which is an absurd idea to begin with, but this is a controversial and it is quickly developing and we need to see this stop. So all in all, and then of course, the most important resource are the fisheries. The fish products are, this is one of the richest fishing coasts of the world. There are, the fish are exported in different ways like oil or fish meal. Those are the most valuable probably due to the volume of it, but also canned and frozen fish. Some of it ends up in Europe, Germany, France, and some ends up in West Africa, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, populated West African countries. Some also probably ends up in the United States. We're not 100% sure about those trade routes, but there might be and some end up in Asia. This is the largest industry that also employs many settlers. Now, the interesting point is that the European Union, the EU-Moroccan trade agreements, which include, they've always been including Western Sahara in violation of international law, according to the EU court itself. The EU institutions politically, they have been overruling these judgments, ignoring them, and instead signing new agreements. Now, we will see a very interesting development happening now probably at one point during the summer in which the court of justice of the EU, again, will come with a new statement on EU-Moroccan trade, where we hopefully will see a clarification in terms of the international law applicable and that Western Sahara cannot be included in further trade agreements. Thank you so much. I've spoken enough. All these aspects are found on our website, including the technical details of these companies. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to all the panelists for presenting their experiences and work and ideas. We have a few questions that I will read from the Q and A. I'll just go one by one for time. So one of our first questions are, is there a possibility for the U.S.'s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara to be used to call for a referendum on independence whose outcome Morocco would then have to respect? Is this more likely than Biden completely reversing the policy? Whoever would like to take the question is welcome to just on you. I would be willing to start at least. The problem is that there's no real international community out there, even though we like to refer to it as frequently as possible. The problem here is the UN Security Council and the EU and others. The work that Eric has described is extremely important, but it's by definition almost not political. It's trying to identify better businesses than there are states. Nobody wants to cross the United States right now. I would hope that Biden would reverse this decision that Trump made. But the best that the Security Council can do, I think, is to reassert what is, I thought, but perhaps I'm wrong, still the law of self-determination, which is that the people of Western Sahara have the right to decide whether, through a referendum or any other way, whether or not they want to be independent. That would then make it easier, at least for individual states or perhaps the EU, to begin to impose sanctions on Morocco, which are rarely successful, but sometimes work. And it would at least make it more difficult for countries to continue to exploit the resources of Western Sahara. And that may be the real opening that we could see here. Nothing, frankly, that is done in a formal way will change the mind of Morocco at the moment. It would be impossible to hold a referendum in Western Sahara without the cooperation of the Moroccan government. And so in and of itself, I think, a referendum is not on the table and we need to pursue the other ways of trying to undo what Trump did, but also ensure, as I think another question referred to, that this isn't followed by other states doing the same thing. Western Sahara is a member of the African Union. The African Union still officially supports its independence and most of the members, all in all, recognize that independence formally. They've been extremely quiet and it would seem to me that that's the place to start. One also might go on and say and approach any organization that is uncomfortable with Israel exporting products from Palestine. One of the only things you can do to enrage almost everyone in the UN is to recreate the situation of Palestinians with the situation of the Sahrawis. To me, they're more than a little alike and it's uncomfortable for third world countries in particular to support independence for Palestine vocally and to remain silent in supporting independence for Western Sahara. That's not easy to change because there's nothing in their direct interest but perhaps the economic possibilities that Eric has described will lead to some countries at least paying more attention to this. I quickly add that the United States has been very clear that Russia's annexation of Crimea is illegal and we are perfectly willing to put sanctions on Russia. There's no reason we shouldn't do that in the rest of the international community. These are the Morocco as well. I do believe that a referendum is still possible. I believe it's really the only option in terms of an act of self-determination let's remember how East Timor seemed like a hopeless cause back in the mid 1990s but it was a global civil society mobilized in such a way that it forced the governments that were backing Indonesia's occupation primarily the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada to stop their support and forced the Indonesians to allow for a referendum which is that people overwhelm the Libos or independents as I think most observers would say the people of Western Sahara would do. So I really do think it's up to a global civil society to mobilize and to push this whether it be by targeting corporations that are taking advantage of this or going after our own government in this way putting out the double standards that we have about Kuwait and Crimea for example and recognizing that US leadership I mean, people are really concerned about Russian forces on the border of Ukraine what Russia does try to annex even more of Ukraine. Can the United States say, oh, we support the right self-determination you can expand your territory by force? Really? Can we do that while we still recognize Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara? No way. I mean, US leadership is at stake here. I think these kinds of arguments if the moral ones and the legal ones don't make much headway to these politicians and perhaps the more pragmatic ones will. And also just the idea of the United States we go on and on says, why can't these Arab peoples have more democracy and be more secular and not so Islamist? Why don't we recognize the rights of women, et cetera? Well, that's what the Western Saharas have been doing with their government exiles probably Arab Democratic Republic and in the liberated territories. That's what the people are struggling inside. Instead, we're supporting this repressive right-wing monarchy. And it is, again, putting the reasons we talk about why we have to be in the Middle East to support democracy and stop. I mean, again, there's so many areas where the Western Sahara is a real black eye to the US and its reputation as broader policy goals. I think we can really push this angle as well. Great, thank you. And we have a question kind of pertaining more to activism, which is do changes in the US or other countries foreign policy towards Western Sahara affect the landscape of Sahrawi activism and strategies used? I don't know if you have questions? Yes. Thank you. Yes, I think that this recognition is really, it gave the green light to the occupation to arrest more people. And actually they say it loudly in some, like some declaration and announcements in the social media, in the fake accounts and some also official accounts saying that now we had the recognition from the powerful country and state in the world. So nobody now will take Sahara or will just, I mean, stand against them, what they call it, more community again. So this is really make the people and the risk more in Western Sahara. We understand that this recognition is only for the sake of normalization. And I mean, and they chose actually that United States in its deep, doesn't recognize the Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. And this recognition's purpose is only to improve relations between Morocco and Israel. But we don't care if Morocco wants to develop their relations with any country. We don't care what we are against. It is like to be this relations to be built on our blood. And this is actually what's happened. The USA, it's not like a normal state. It's a country that's made the human rights around the world and it has its reputation. And if give like this illegal sovereignty to unoccupying power, this means that these people will just, I mean, be a victim of a genocide, I think. So, unfortunately, we're really disappointed by we have this little hop on the new administration. And hopefully that will change this political position that is declared by Trump. May I comment on something? Yes, please do. Just something in relation to what Stephen Soons said. Like the parallel if Russia had a next, a little bit more of Ukraine, what kind of arguments would then the US have? And I think the situation is even worse because the United States did not only recognize the Moroccan sovereignty over the parts of Western Sahara that it currently controls. Morocco only controls three quarters of the territory. What the US did was to recognize the entire Western Sahara as there's no distinction between what Morocco currently occupies and what it doesn't. So by saying Western Sahara is part of Morocco would be saying like the entire Ukraine is part of Russia. Imagine the green light that Morocco might feel politically in just, okay, it's all ours. It is setting a dangerous signal to an escalation of the conflict in the same way it would have been if Russia had, if the states have said the entirety of Ukraine is part of Russia. That is a very dangerous thing to say on the United States. So I'm deeply concerned about this. And from a European perspective, we are totally baffled and of course shocked. And Biden has little credibility on international law if it fails to correct Trump's spectacular move. Great, thank you. We have one more question before we'll wrap up about one. We had a question of Professor Hanemi briefly address this. We had a question about with Moroccan rejoining the EU, the African Union and trying to influence countries in Africa to end recognition for Western Sahara. How can Sahara always maintain support from countries that have traditionally supported them in the EU? And I suppose we could also extend this question slightly to think more about Sahara's building, support and recognition from individual countries both in the region and outside. Would anyone like to begin? Or yes, it's a bit of a broad question, but any aspect of it? There has to be, if I may say, just need to reflect a bit. There has been ever since Morocco joined the African Union, not really returned to, because it was never really part of the African Union. It was part of the previous organization. Ever since Morocco joined the African Union, of course the African institutions have been a battleground between these two parties of the conflict. I do not think there has been much shift in spite of the new membership of Morocco. There has been no real shift, at least no special trends in relation to how it was in the past. Some governments changed position from one government to the other, and then it returns to the way it was before. So some of these governments have very shifting positions on the conflict going from one extreme to the other. But that does not necessarily have anything to do with the Moroccan seat in the African Union, I think. That's more on the bilateral level. I think the decolonization is still within the generation we have now, African leaders, it's very fresh in mind still. And I don't think there's a big risk of a massive AU change on the parliament or a peace and security council level. I think it remains quite stable. And I mean, the three larger countries in Africa, South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria are still very much supportive to the Sakharawis and that collars a lot to the political organization. Great, thank you. Would any of the other panelists like to comment or we can wrap up? I guess I'd like to say just thank you for having this discussion at all. It's been very rare that Western Sahara has, it ever comes up. And so I've had very few, despite this being one of my areas of expertise, I've had few occasions to talk about this. I'm very, very grateful for you to do this. But I think it also underscores, again, just to make a connection to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, which of course is a much better known issue. Also, of course, a very divisive issue. I think that if we, the more we talk about Western Sahara, I think it will also help the Palestinian cause because I think it will underscore that this is not about ideology or countries right to exist or whatever. This is about the right of self-determination. This is about international law. This is about human rights. This is about maintaining the United Nations Charter. I mean, these are the universal issues that got me involved in Western Sahara and the United Nations Charter. And I think it's a great opportunity for me to be a part of this team more in Palestine and give you a back far enough Namibia. And so I am, and we can't get something as basic as whether or not a country has a right to invade, occupy, and colonize a weaker neighbor. If we can't resolve something like that, how are we going to as an international community address the more complicated issues? Again, this is, again, obviously I'm involved in this in part, of course, because I care about the Sakharawi people, but even more than that, I care about the post-World War II international legal system that is founded in international law and the United Nations Charter. And this is what's at stake here if Morocco gets away with its takeover of Western Sahara and the United States as a principal architect of the United Nations Charter as a principal architect of the post-World War II international legal order. If we are continue to support that, it's going to be very bad, not just for the Sakharawis, but the rest of the world. I just wanted to join in thanking the organizers as well. As I said at the beginning, it's too rare that we discuss Western Sahara. I also want to thank those of you who said something nice about international law. Usually it seems to get in the way. And I think unfortunately, that's also what more and more countries are thinking as well. But we did set up something in 1945 and subsequently that I think has made the world a better place. And the real danger is that now we're going back to the 19th century when strength was all that mattered and whether it's Kosovo, which was, after all, is quasi-independent because of the use of force supported by almost all Europeans and Americans, or whether it's Western Sahara or whether it's Palestine. Hypocrisy has never died in international relations. We hope that law brings some sort of consistency, but Western Sahara is unfortunately a paradigm of how difficult it is to translate law into practice and if this is a little step forward towards making people more aware of that dichotomy then it's certainly worth doing and I hope that you all keep doing it. Thank you both for those comments and thank you all for coming, all those of you who attended the panel today and of course to our panelists. We hope you all have a wonderful weekend to wherever you are. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.