Aminatou Haidar is one of those campaigners who has come close to embodying her people’s cause in the eyes of the international community. Her heroic nonviolent resistance and hunger strikes have caught the imagination of the world. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
For almost the entire life of the, New Internationalist the people of Western Sahara have been enduring their agony of exile and occupation. Following the withdrawal of the colonial power, Spain, the International Court of Justice ruled in October 1975 that the Saharawi people should be given the right to self-determination. In November of that year, however, King Hassan II of Morocco instituted a mass march over the border to claim the territory. Tens of thousands of Saharawis fled from Moroccan troops into the desert, eventually establishing refugee camps hundreds of kilometres away, near the Algerian town of Tindouf. The other half of the population stayed at home and have suffered the consequences of military occupation ever since.
