Activist targets ‘illegal’ fertiliser
Activist Tecber Ahmed Saleh flew 18,445 kilometres to stop New Zealand’s ‘‘illegal trade’’ in phosphate.
Unfortunately, few people have heeded her message.
Fertiliser company Ravensdown would not meet her. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who visited Ahmed Saleh’s refugee camp in 2008, was too busy to talk.
The Western Saharawi advocate was here to raise the issue of the phosphate mined in her homeland.
Between them, Ravensdown and Ballance Agri-Nutrients import about $30 million worth of phosphate a year from the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
Ardern’s office said she took a strong interest in the issue, and in the past had talked with the companies about finding alternatives to sourcing the phosphate.
Ahmed Saleh said she hoped New Zealanders, and especially farmers, would be responsive to the plight of her people.
‘‘My message to New Zealand farmers is that, once they know the story behind the trade, I hope they have a human response to it. At the moment, they don’t want to know where the phosphate is coming from, they don’t question anything.’’
Morocco invaded the region in 1976 when Spain withdrew as an occupying power, driving out many of the Western Sahawaris into refugee camps on the Algerian side of the border with Morocco.
The international community sees the territory as a non-self-governing territory under the legal administrative authority of Spain yet under defacto Moroccan civil and military occupation.
Growing up in a refugee camp – one of five containing 173,000 people – Ahmed Saleh and her friends knew of no other world.
‘‘As kids, we were happy because we didn’t know what our parents went through, we thought this was our home.’’
But during summer the heat became unbearable when temperatures soared to 56 degrees Celsius, and the refugees baked in tents.
Sympathetic non-government organisations arranged for the young to be hosted by families in Spain and Italy. Ahmed Saleh stayed in luxury accommodation compared to the camp.
‘‘Suddenly, I had a different life. I went from having nothing to having everything, and I wondered why my father and mother couldn’t provide. That’s when I started to know I was a refugee. You learn you don’t belong to that place [camp], you have a better home but somebody’s taken it from you.’’
Ahmed Saleh is a health worker in the camps.
She says the refugees suffer from chronic anaemia and malnutrition, diabetes, and other diseases.
She hopes for a breakthrough in the stalemate over the Western Sahara to avoid an armed struggle which might involve her four brothers who are in the military.
Ravensdown communications manager Gareth Richards said many Sahawaris benefited from the phosphate trade because they worked for Moroccan government agency OCP, the largest employer of local people in the area.
‘‘We are acting legally under the UN framework, are mindful of the humanitarian situation of all the Saharawi including those in the Algerian camps and we continue to work on finding additional sources that meet the unique needs of New Zealand’s farming systems.’’
Western Sahara representative to Australia and New Zealand, Kamal Fadel, said the companies were using the UN as an excuse not to act.
‘‘We’re not asking the companies to resolve the political issues, we’re asking them to help by stopping the exploitation until the situation is resolved.’’