The Legal Battle for Natural Resources in Western Sahara
Date and time: Saturday, May 16, 2020, 5 to 6:30 pm Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)
Register here.
Learn about the exploitation of natural resources in Western Sahara and the legal battle taking place in the courts.
The issue of natural resources in Western Sahara is subject to much interest from both parties to the conflict. The illegality of their exploitation constitutes a major tool in the negotiations process and constitutes a major political leverage. The inclusion of the territory within the territorial scope of two major trade and partnership agreements between the EU and the Kingdom of Morocco has been the subject of groundbreaking decisions in 2016 and 2018. Meriem will discuss the background, meaning and impact of these decisions in Europe and beyond, highlighting the weaknesses of a system seemingly designed to uphold the rule of law.
Meriem Naili is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) in Security, Conflict and Human Rights. She holds a master’s degree in Public International Law from the University of Grenoble (France) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands). She is a member of the steering committee of the International Academic Observatory on Western Sahara (OUISO) at the University of Paris Descartes and Western Sahara Campaign UK.
Her research focuses on the absence of human rights monitoring mechanisms within the MINURSO mandate and its impact(s) on the evolution and resolution of the conflict in Western Sahara. She is specifically interested in the issue of access to natural resources and has published in December 2019 an article on the legal battle over natural resources at the EU level in the Cahiers de L’Ouest Saharien Journal. She is also the author of a book chapter on ‘The legal aspects of the functioning of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara’ and an article entitled ‘Defeating illegal trade in Western Sahara: when corporations are weighted down by NGOs’ both to be published this year.
