Western Sahara has been occupied by the Kingdom of Morocco for nearly half a century. Throughout the pandemic, Morocco weaponized COVID as yet another tool in its arsenal to violently repress Sahrawi independence activists, with ramifications palpable throughout Western Sahara to this day.
A group of Sahrawi women demonstrates with flags on the street in the city center during a demonstration. Protesters marched in the Spanish capital to demand respect for international legality in Western Sahara, and its decolonization by Morocco.
Her work can be found on Instagram at takeme. Even peaceful advocacy for self-determination, deemed oppositional by Morocco, is met with harsh clampdowns. One of the tell-tale signs of the occupation is how the Moroccan flag is draped everywhere, to an extent not seen in Morocco. The streets of Laayoune are generally immaculate, with signs of the Moroccan occupation everywhere. In , Israel normalised relations with Egypt by returning the Sinai Peninsula but retained control of the others, occupying the West Bank and Gaza with military force.
At present, more than half a million Israeli settlers inhabit the West Bank, , in East Jerusalem, and 20, in unofficial settlements unsanctioned zones alongside Palestinian residents. These settlements have all been deemed illegal by the United Nations, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that a nation cannot move civilians into an area that it occupies during wartime.
Israel disputes this, saying that the West Bank and East Jerusalem were previously never officially part of any formal Arab nation at the time. Around this time, Morocco was sending settlers to occupy the freshly abdicated region.
