In 1975, Najla Mohamed-Lamin’s grandmother fled Moroccan troops entering Western Sahara. For 50 years, Najla’s family, and 200,000 of the Saharawi people, have lived in refugee camps in western Algeria.
Despite a clear legal case under international law for self-determination and a promise from Morocco to hold a referendum on the future of Western Sahara, the Saharawi people remain separated from their land, and are almost invisible to the international community.
In 2023 Najla was one of the BBC’s one hundred most influential women in the world, and she is today’s guest on Podcast for Inquiry.
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Thank you Najla!
ReplyDeleteI've done a bit of research since watching this episode, and l agree that the plight of the Sahrawi people is pretty much as straightforward to redress as these things come. There's literally no impediment to self-determination beyond Moroccan greed for territory and resources, because no one other than the Sahrawis has a legitimate claim to the land of the Western Sahara state. Having said that, l wish the North African Arab/Muslim conquests were acknowledged alongside European/Christian colonialism, because whereas the Berber ethnic base of contemporary Maghreb populations is indeed indigenous, the significant Arab admixture is not...