'' The impasse of the Sahara conflict is directly related to the absence of census in Tindouf camps,'' stressed MEPs from different political groups in an open letter to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini on the eve of meeting held in Brussels by Morocco-EU Association Council.
The open letter is signed by French Socialist MEP and President of the EU-Morocco Friendship Group at the European Parliament, Gilles Pargneaux, German MEP from PPE Group and Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament, Ingeborg Grassle, MEP Rachida Dati from PPE Group and former French Minister of Justice, Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries from ALDE Group, Robert Rochefort, French MEP from ALDE Group and vice-chairman of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection and British MEP of Socialists and Democrats Sion Simon.
The signatories of the letter note that no one knows the exact number of people living in the Tindouf camps, noting that the European Parliament has focused on this problematic situation many times, including a report on the implementation of the EU general budget for 2013.
In this report, a large majority of the European Parliament members called on the European Commission to contribute to the organization of a census in Tindouf camps to prevent the embezzlement of humanitarian aid.
They also stressed that the UN Security Council also blamed in its resolution of 28 April 2015, the status quo in the Sahara because of the lack of population census in Tindouf camps.
The Sahara conflict has slowed the strengthening of EU-Morocco relations and negatively impacted the population of Tindouf who lives in appalling humanitarian conditions, they lamented, noting that recent flooding in the Tindouf camps have shown that this situation is totally unacceptable.
In the letter, MEPs attracted the attention of Ms. Mogherini on the activities of smuggling and trafficking that proliferate in the Sahel region, which constitute an important source of financing of terrorism.
The challenges facing the region require Europe to be a strong international player, particularly in its immediate neighborhood and play a positive role in the Sahara conflict that has already lasted too long, they argued, calling in this respect the EU Member States to include the issue of population census in Tindouf in the conclusions of the forthcoming EU-Morocco Association Council scheduled for Monday in Brussels.
A report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), released in January 2015, reported a massive embezzlement of international and organized humanitarian aid to Tindouf camps for the benefit of Polisario leaders and senior Algerian officials.
OLAF attributes this embezzlement to overestimation by Algeria and Polisario of the number of the population of Tindouf and therefore their need for humanitarian aid.
To continue to benefit from the humanitarian aid, Algeria and Polisario Front have always been opposed to any census in Tindouf camps despite formal requests by UNHCR in 1977, 2003, 2005 and 2015.
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