UNIFEM WOMEN, WAR AND PEACE WEB PORTAL: WESTERN SAHARA

2006 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | Pre-2000

2006

Western Sahara refugees urge incoming UN leader not to forget them
October 11, 2006 – (AP) The head of Western Sahara's government-in-exile urged the next U.N. secretary general Wednesday not to forget his people's three-decade struggle for independence from Morocco. "The credibility of the United Nations depends on respecting the fundamental principles of world peace, including peoples' right to self-determination," Mohamed Abdelaziz said in an interview broadcast on Algerian radio.

2004

DIVORCE DIVIDES MOROCCO AND W SAHARA
August 4, 2004 - (BBC) A new family code in Morocco, known as the Mudawana, is having differing effects on women's rights in the Islamic kingdom and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which falls under Moroccan rule.

2003

SAHARA WOMEN RELISH THEIR RIGHTS
October 30, 2003 – (BBC) Fatma Maulud is a Saharawi from the Western Sahara.

A SAHARAWI WOMAN SPEAKS OUT
May 19, 2003 – (Norwegian Support Committee for Western Sahara -Oslo) In May/June 2003 a representative of the Saharawi people, Fatima Mahfoud, will visit Australia and New Zealand to tell the story of the Western Sahara conflict from a Saharawi woman's point of view.

2002

SAHARA REFUGEES FACE FOOD SHORTAGE
August 29, 2002 – (BBC) Western Saharan refugees are said to be facing serious food shortages in their camps because of insufficient funding from donors.

1999

A WORLD WHERE MUSLIM WOMEN WEAR THE PANTS
February 1, 1999 – (TIME) Saharawi women stand behind their men only in the figurative sense--they are among the most liberated Muslim women in the world. They don't veil their faces, they wear make-up, they sit in their parliament-in-exile, and they provide 90% of the local councilors who run the refugee camps in the Algerian desert. Male Saharawi leaders say Iran and other Muslim countries have begun to complain about the Saharawi women's status.

1998

MOMA'S CHOICE: YOUNG WOMEN CLAIMING THEIR FUTURE - AND ONE WOMAN'S CHILLING DILEMMA
December 1998 – (New Internationalist – Issue 297) I hear it again and again before I set out for the Sahara: 'The Saharawi women are remarkable - quite different from the women in the other Muslim countries of the region.' The stories are legion of how they have run the refugee camps more or less without men for two decades, of their outspokenness and their education.

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