{"id":37986,"date":"2023-03-28T07:44:27","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T07:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=37986"},"modified":"2023-03-29T07:46:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T07:46:57","slug":"unrecognised-documents-and-the-right-to-nationality-the-case-of-western-sahara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/unrecognised-documents-and-the-right-to-nationality-the-case-of-western-sahara\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrecognised Documents and the Right to Nationality: The Case of Western Sahara"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By: Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Since 1976, after the end of Spanish colonial domination, Western Sahara has been considered a\u00a0non-self-governing territory<\/a>. The\u00a0legal status<\/a>\u00a0of the territory remains disputed with Morocco occupying a part of the territory and the Polisario Front, a national liberation movement, exercising control over the remaining part. Sahrawis live in the occupied territory, in the territory under the control of the Polisario Front, and thousands of Sahrawis live mainly in refugee camps in Algeria. In 1976, the\u00a0Polisario Front<\/a>\u00a0declared the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and currently, SADR is a\u00a0member<\/a>\u00a0of the African Union. Although the SADR is recognised by about\u00a043%<\/a>\u00a0of UN member states,\u00a0the UN does not recognise Moroccan or SADR sovereignty over Western Sahara.<\/p>\n

Since the legal status of Western Sahara is disputed, so too is the status of Sahrawis. SADR\/ Polisario Front issues legal identity documents to Sahrawis within Western Sahara as well as in Algeria. These documents include passports, birth certificates and national identity cards (see\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>). These documents, for instance,\u00a0enable travel<\/a>\u00a0out of the refugee camps in Algeria and travel to states that recognise these documents such as Mauritania. While some Sahrawis have accepted Moroccan nationality, others could be considered\u00a0stateless<\/a>. Yet, as mentioned, many Sahrawis including those who might be considered stateless possess SADR documents. However, the usefulness of these documents is limited since these documents remain\u00a0unrecognised<\/a>\u00a0by the majority of states. Moreover, the author of these documents is the Polisario Front, a non-state actor and the documents are issued as SADR documents, a widely unrecognised state. This raises questions about the legitimacy of these documents. In this regard, this post briefly explains that, despite the problems related to these SADR documents, these documents might have implications for securing the right to nationality of the Sahrawis.<\/p>\n

Read further: https:\/\/www.armedgroups-internationallaw.org\/2023\/03\/28\/unrecognised-documents-and-the-right-to-nationality-the-case-of-western-sahara\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By: Andrea Marilyn Pragashini Immanuel Since 1976, after the end of Spanish colonial domination, Western Sahara has been considered a\u00a0non-self-governing territory. The\u00a0legal status\u00a0of the territory remains disputed with Morocco occupying a part of the territory and the Polisario Front, a national liberation movement, exercising control over the remaining part. Sahrawis live in the occupied territory, […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-sahrawi-arab-democratic-republic","type-blog-posts","item-year-691","item-theme-id-documents-and-passports","item-theme-statelessness"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37987,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37986\/revisions\/37987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}