The Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP) denounces the cases of paedophilia that have affected Saharawi children within the programme "Holidays in Peace"

In recent days, several Spanish media have reported on the dismantling by the police in Argentona (Barcelona) of a child abuse network led by a teacher. According to these reports, in this network, Saharawi children were allegedly sexually abused in the framework of the annual programme organised by the various associations of friendship and solidarity with the Sahara, which usually collaborate with the Polisario Front.

This is not the first time that similar facts have been revealed in the Spanish press, where minors in the Saharawi refugee camps in Tindouf have been left unprotected in the past against this type of abominable acts. All this without the corresponding control and supervision of a programme that should protect them, but which, beyond being a political propaganda tool whose main purpose is to use minors, proves not to have the organisational framework to guarantee the children's safety. To give a few examples: 

In 2020, the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community sentenced to four years in prison another aggressor who had taken in a Sahrawi minor who had arrived from the refugee camps as part of the "Holidays in Peace" programme, and who had stayed in Spain for medical treatment. 

In November 2023, the High Court of Justice of Extremadura acquitted a man who had been convicted on two occasions of sexually assaulting a Sahrawi minor hosted in the "Holidays in Peace" programme due to the "failure of the victim to appear". 

Despite the growing number of cases, the solidarity movement behind this programme, led by the evergreen Councillor for Solidarity of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, Carmelo Ramirez, has not taken appropriate measures to prevent the repetition of these cases of paedophilia and child abuse. He seems to be more concerned with meddling in the internal Saharawi debate and making his own the criticisms of the Polisario leadership towards the opposition, or obtaining millionaire subsidies for his cooperation projects, than with preventing and condemning these cases. In addition, there is an inexplicable silence, presumably to avoid criticism, when in reality, what the movement should be doing is presenting itself as a private prosecutor in these cases. 

Until now, the thousands of children between 8 and 10 years old who arrive in Spain every summer are distributed in a sort of "public auction" among the families and persons available, maximising the number of "fosterers" and children included in the programme, as it represents an important source of income for the various support committees and the Polisario delegations in Spain. 

The MSP calls on the solidarity movement and its leaders to be more vigilant and rigorous, by involving Spanish public institutions to a greater extent in these fostering programmes, by implementing the necessary measures in their regulations in order to avoid a repetition of such abuses in the future.