APS : Monday 25 March 2019
PRETORIA-Vice-Minister, Foreign Minister, Ramtane Lamamra partakes in the preparatory ministerial meeting for the international Solidarity Conference with the Western Sahara scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Pretoria.
The ministerial meeting is part of the implementation of the decisions of the South African Development Community (SADC), held on August 2018, to reiterate solidarity with Western Sahara and back the Sahrawi people’s struggle for their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with the principles of the decolonization of the African continent.
Held at the conference centre of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Republic of South African, the preparatory meeting brings together Ramtane Lamamra, the FMs of 16 SADC member countries and high representatives of the countries friends with the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), notably Nigeria, Venezuela, Cuba and Kenya.
Several heads of state and government, including the presidents of Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Uganda take part in the Pretoria Conference, in addition to former presidents, like Nigerian Olusegun Obasanjo and high-level delegations from non-African countries, particularly Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Timor Leste. Participants also include several African civil society organizations.
During this two-day Conference, the Sahrawi FM is expected to present a video on occupied Western Sahara.
The heads of state and government seize this opportunity to voice the support of the African community to the decolonization process and the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.
In the afternoon, the Conference will continue in the form of two distinct workshops on the role of the international community in ensuring the implementation of the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) resolutions on Western Sahara, including the tightening of measures against the exploitation of the country’s natural resources.
The Conference is expected to culminate in the adoption of SADC’s regional strategy and a statement aimed at establishing mechanism that ensure that stakeholders and partners, including Morocco, comply with the decisions of the AU and the UN and step up the resolution of the Sahrawi conflict.
