Aminatou Haidar was nominated for 2008 Nobel Peace Prize by American Friends Service Committee, recipient of 1975 Nobel Peace Prize
13 Oct 2008 | Solidarity-Support
While this year’s Nobel Peace Prize has gone to former Finish President Martti Ahtisaari, among the Prize’s many nominees was Aminatou Haidar, winner of the 2008 Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award.
The American Friends Service Committee nominated Mrs. Haidar in the letter below:
November 19, 2007Dr. Geir Lundestad, Director
Norwegian Nobel Committee
The Norwegian Nobel Institute
Henrik Ibsens gate 51
NO-0255 Oslo, NorwayDear Dr. Lundestad:
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is pleased to nominate for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Aminatou Haidar of the Western Sahara. Aminatou Haidar is a mother and human rights activist engaged in the nonviolent struggle against the occupation of the Western Sahara by Morocco and for the recognized but unrealized right of the Sahrawi people for self-determination. Both in her own right and as an example of the many mothers who take public stands at great personal risk for the sake of a future for their children, Aminatou Haidar claims our deep respect. We commend her to the Nobel Committee for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.
In addition to the criteria prescribed by the Nobel Committee, AFSC applies the following criteria in considering a candidate for nomination:
• The candidate’s commitment to nonviolent methods;
• The quality of the candidate and the candidate’s sustained contribution to peace;
• The candidate’s work on issues of peace, justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment;
• The candidate’s possession of a world view and/or global impact as opposed to a parochial concern.
We also take note of crisis areas and consider how the award of the Nobel Prize might, by its timeliness and visibility, offer valuable support to a solution of the crisis.With these criteria in mind, we were drawn both by the low international visibility of the Sahrawi struggle and the commitment of Aminatou Haidar and others to persist in nonviolent resistance to oppression by an armed occupation force. When Quakers were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, it was for service of the nameless to the nameless. As Quakers, then, it may be our task to amplify the voices and raise the visibility of common people of uncommon courage and tenacity when they are engaged in a seemingly forgotten struggle for basic human rights and adherence to international law. We were also moved by how the Sahrawi struggle illuminates the ways the United States has contributed to the devaluation of human rights and respect for international law in recent years. Aminatou Haidar’s disappearance, detention, and torture at the hands of the Moroccan government for her nonviolent stand for human rights hold up a light to the shadowy collusion of the United States and Morocco in the disappearance, detention, and torture of detainees in the “global war on terror.”
In its 1996 award of the Peace Prize to Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta for their courageous efforts in another “forgotten conflict,” that of East Timor, the Nobel Committee concluded: “Rarely has the cynicism of world politics been more clearly demonstrated. The numerous considerations of ‘Realpolitik’ have enabled an exceptionally brutal form of neocolonialism to take place.” We believe that the same statement applies to Western Sahara more than a decade later.
Our study of the thirty-year Sahrawi struggle to exercise the right of self-determination in the Western Sahara, often referred to as “Africa’s last colony,” reveals to us how foreign policy, especially that of our own country, is so often shaped by expediency rather than by principle. For example, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States rushed in to protect the Kuwaitis and their “democracy,” while we did nothing when Morocco and Mauritania invaded the former Spanish Sahara colony to claim it for themselves. And, as the United States seeks to impose “democracy” on Iraq through a military invasion and occupation in contravention of international law, it has largely ignored the Sahrawi’s nonviolent struggle for a self-determination recognized as theirs under international law.
Historical Background
Sparsely populated but rich in resources, the Western Sahara was a colony of Spain from 1884 to 1975. Its Arabized Berber population had mounted a resistance movement to Spain’s continuing colonization (1970-1975), led by an armed guerilla movement, the Polisario Front. As General Franco’s power waned in Spain, the Spanish sought to rid itself of the Saharan problem in 1975 by authorizing a referendum on the colony’s final status. Both Morocco and Mauritania claimed ownership of the Western Sahara, and Morocco asked the International Court of Justice (IJC) to rule on their claims. After consulting with the indigenous population, who overwhelmingly desired independence, the IJC rejected the Moroccan and Mauritanian claims and called for the referendum.
When their legal claim to the territory was thwarted, Morocco and Mauritania invaded and occupied the Western Sahara, and together with Spain concluded a treaty in which Spain agreed to pull out of Western Sahara in 1976 and divided the territory between Morocco and Mauritana in exchange for valuable mineral and fishing rights. Meanwhile, the Polisario proclaimed independence for the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic in 1976 and redirected its armed struggle against the new occupying forces. After a ceasefire in 1991 that left Morocco in control of eighty percent of the country and the Polisario the other twenty percent, Morocco agreed in 1992 to a referendum on independence. By this time 180,000 Sahrawis had gone into exile in Algerian refugee camps just over the border, and Moroccan settlers outnumbered the indigenous population two to one. This referendum has yet to take place. Instead Morocco floated the idea of an autonomy plan for Western Sahara, but later turned down a UN proposal that would have brought about the right of self-determination after a period of autonomy.
The Sahrawis had the example of Eritrea to learn from, since Eritrea was offered autonomy by Ethiopia in 1952 only to find itself annexed to Ethiopia in 1961. Similarly, Menachem Begin of Israel offered autonomy to Palestinians while refusing to acknowledge that that autonomy could one day be transformed to independence. The Sahrawis felt that if they were to endorse autonomy, they would be endorsing the territorial expansion by force of an occupying power. As Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation and chair of the US-Western Sahara Foundation, commented recently on this issue:
Failing to get Morocco out of Western Sahara will mean that invasion and aggression and war are the means to achieve one’s end. It will prove to Morocco and other would be aggressors that invasion and aggression are the answer. It will prove to the Sahrawis that laying down their weapons and agreeing to the ceasefire was a terrible mistake.
Threats of a French and US veto have kept the UN from imposing sanctions against Morocco’s continuing occupation, and while the Polisario has scrupulously honored the 1991 ceasefire, rumors have circulated in the West that the refugee camps are breeding grounds for al-Qaeda and that Morocco is fighting the war on terror for us. The fact is that there has never been a terrorist attack from these camps, which are secular and antithetic to Islamic fundamentalists, as is the Algerian government, which sponsors the camps. More to the point, competing interests over oil and trade between the US and the European Union (EU), as well as entrenched colonialist positions of countries within the EU, are the overarching reasons why a just solution to the issue of Western Sahara’s independence is continually thwarted.
Morocco has continued to disappear, imprison, and torture those who have resisted the occupation. What is amazing is that the resistance to Morocco has persisted and that it has largely been nonviolent. Indeed the huge uprising of 2005, the so-called “Intifada of 2005” has been nonviolent, though it is by no means a certainty that it will maintain its nonviolent character. It will take a lot of dedication among the indigenous leadership and pressure from the global civic community to publicize the plight of those living in Africa’s last colony and to lift up their nonviolent struggle, aligning it with similar recent struggles in places like Lebanon, Myanmar and Georgia.
Aminatou Haidar
We believe you need the somewhat lengthy historical background to appreciate the importance of Aminatou Haidar, a humble divorced mother of two who has given her adult life to the nonviolent struggle for self-determination for her people. In 1987, when she was twenty yeas old and still a student, she participated in a huge peaceful demonstration when the UN Technical Committee came to Morocco to set requirements for holding a referendum on self-determination. She was arrested and disappeared for four years, during which she was tortured, beaten, held in secret, and subjected to physical conditions that destroyed her health. When she was released in 1991, she immediately continued her nonviolent activism, rising to such prominence among her people that she is often referred to as the Sahrawi Gandhi. In the late nineties she was again arrested, beaten and jailed. When the Intifada of 2005 took place, she was imprisoned once again and, with others, engaged in a fifty-day hunger strike. Released from jail in January 2006 to enthusiastic supporters, she lost her job and income, and yet she perseveres against tremendous odds and the world’s indifference to her people’s thirty-year struggle.
We are enthusiastic about Aminatou Haidar’s Nobel nomination not only for the intrinsic worth of her own personal actions, but because she is a model of how ordinary working mothers and fathers can rise above their circumstances in their devotion to a cause greater than their own survival. Her particular example thus has global significance in a time when we have few models of those who can turn from their own suffering to forgive their oppressors and work for a state of reconciliation and equality. She resembles Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose incarceration has inspired the Burmese people to continue to resist nonviolently. At the same time, she is self-effacing and does not draw attention to herself at the expense of being able to form coalitions with others. As one who has met her observes, “On the two occasions I have met her, she has blended in with others in the room and encouraged others to take the lead. When she does speak up, her exceptional wisdom and courage become apparent, but she sees herself as an equal with others.” Clearly an exceptional woman, her humble background and outlook make it possible for ordinary citizens to believe they can make a difference by emulating her and can find the courage to face oppression and violence with a determined and principled nonviolent response.
Ms. Haidar has been able to draw attention to her country’s plight, especially in Europe. She was nominated for the Sakharov Prize in 2005 and was awarded the Juan Maria Bandres Prize by the Spanish Committee for the Assistance to Refugees (CEAR) in 2006 for her “exemplary commitment to the struggle of the Sahrawi people for their legitimate right to decide freely their future.” Most recently, Ms. Haidar was awarded the prestigious Silver Rose Award in Sweden in 2007.
Her nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize comes at a crucial time in her country’s struggle. As some observers have put it, the nonviolent character of the Sahrawi movement needs positive reinforcement from the world community lest those among the Sahrawis who advocate a return to violence gain traction among people who have seen no movement in Morocco’s rigid stand against Sahrawi self-determination. A successful Muslim movement of nonviolence that can achieve democracy and independence in the Western Sahara would be a gift to all countries seeking to shake off the yoke of imperial power in the Islamic world and elsewhere. Her country may be small, but her life shows us that every human life is important as is every human struggle to achieve dignity through nonviolent action. As young Quakers we were often told to be the pattern. Aminatou Haidar is the pattern of how one can persist in hope and love in the face of incredible hostility and oppression. She is worthy of both our admiration and support – and the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Sincerely yours,
Mary Ellen McNish
General Secretary
American Friends Service Committee
