The European Conference of Support and Solidarity with the Saharawi People (EUCOCO) has been held continuously since 1975, the year of the beginning of the conflict, continuously, each year in a different European city. The Asociación de Amistad con el Pueblo Saharaui de Sevilla (AAPSS) will participate on behalf of HIC.
Asociación de Amistad con el Pueblo Saharaui de Sevilla (AAPSS)
The Asociación de Amistad con el Pueblo Saharaui de Sevilla (AAPSS) was born as a result of the concerns of a group of people identified with the problem of the Saharawi people and with the aim of disseminating, raising awareness and supporting the cause of a people unjustly exiled from their land and condemned to live in refugee camps since 1976.
AAPSS is a Member of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), the global network for rights related to habitat. Through solidarity, networking and support for social movements and nongovernmental organizations, HIC struggles for social justice, gender equality, and environmental sustainability, and works in the defence, promotion and realization of human rights related to housing, land and other natural resources in both rural and urban areas.
For the past 30 years HIC has prioritized the human rights to habitat for large-scale victims of housing and land rights violations, its scope has included subjects of systematic discrimination, including peoples subject to occupation and alien domination. Thus, the case of Palestine has since become a mainstream cause for HIC.
The “Solidarity Network” comprised of Kurdish, Palestinian and Tibetan civil society members was formed in the context of the 2nd UN Habitat Conference at Istanbul. This pivotal commitment to peoples denied their rightful lands, national wealth and natural resources, also constituting the violation their inalienable right to self-determination, extend equally to the Sahrawi people. In 2006-08, HIC took a series of pledges, including at Tifariti, to dedicate efforts toward (1) defragmenting the affected peoples and (2) promoting comparative analysis of their cases whenever and wherever possible.
That commitment now reaches a new stage in which HIC is working with the Western Sahara Support Group of states and NGOs at Geneva to offer technical assistance in developing human rights and international law-based plans for civil engagement in united advocacy claims before the UN’s legal and political forums. Integrating all assets into a common strategy has proved to be useful and even transformative in advancing the message through civil solidarity to the international system.
More information on the AAPSS and HIC Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC HLRN).