The Sahrawi Movement for Peace participates in United Nations sessions on the Sahara

Full statement by Hach Ahmed Bericalla, the First Secretary of the Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP) during the Fourth Committee of the United Nations on the new resolution on Morocco's Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara proposed by the North African country in 2007. 

Mr President, 

It is a pleasure to address this Committee for the first time on behalf of the Movement Saharawi for Peace (MSP), a genuinely Sahrawi political organisation, founded five years ago as an expression of our people's weariness and frustration after half a century of suffering. 

We are not the voice of the Polisario, nor of Morocco, nor of any other actor or neighbouring country in the region. We are Sahrawis tired of war and exile, but we are also the voice of those who still believe in a future of peace. 

For more than fifty years, our people have lived trapped between confrontation and uncertainty: families divided, young people without prospects, children born under tarpaulins, elderly people dying far from their homeland. 

Every death, every life lost in war or exile is an open wound and a reminder that we have failed: we, as victims and actors in the conflict, and also the international community, which thirty years ago promised a peaceful solution that never came. 

Today we are not here to repeat slogans or get caught up in irreconcilable positions that have monopolised the debate in this commission for decades. We are here to propose another way: that of dialogue, coexistence and compromise. 

A way that rejects maximalism, because we know that intransigence and radicalism — like weapons and walls — never bring freedom or prosperity. 

Our voice is that of the elderly who dream silently of returning before they die; that of the young people who refuse to inherit endless exile; and that of the mothers who want to raise their children under a sky of peace and freedom, not under the shadow of a rifle or other instrument of death. 

Many of us have decided to put an end to this long and painful journey to nowhere, to close the cycle of confrontation and open the cycle of hope, whatever the cost, because, as Erasmus of Rotterdam said six centuries ago: 

‘Peace, even if imperfect, is always better than a just war.’ 

We do not aspire to glory or a place in the history books. We only ask for the opportunity to contribute to a peaceful solution and to enable our people to finally live with dignity in their own land. 

Peace is not an impossible dream. It only requires courage and sincere will. 

We come today, therefore, to extend our hand with humility and determination, convinced that reconciliation between Sahrawis and Moroccans is not a concession, but a duty to our people and to the future of the entire region. 

The Movement Saharawi for Peace is a new, realistic and constructive partner of the United Nations in its efforts to help Sahrawis and Moroccans write a new history of peace and coexistence in the Sahara and throughout North-West Africa. 

Help us to open this path.