Diplomacy Day: Attaf restates Algeria’s support for just causes

Algeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, the National Community Abroad and African Affairs, Ahmed Attaf, on Thursday restated the country’s long-standing positions in support of just causes. He said a fairer international order cannot be built without justice for oppressed peoples still seeking to realize their aspirations.

Speaking at the celebration of Algeria’s National Day of Diplomacy, which coincided with the 81st anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, Attaf said delegates at the 81st session of the General Assembly had converged on one conclusion: the international system is in deep crisis. He described the mood as a mix of frustration, rising anxiety and a measure of pessimism about what lies ahead.

That mood, he said, is fed by unsettling changes and by hard questions about the future of the international order and the ability of the international community to honor the principles it set for itself.

Attaf listed several sources of concern. He began with the standing of the United Nations, citing attempts to sideline it and conduct that runs against the purposes and principles of the Charter. He pointed to a serious decline in respect for international law, and to rules that are supposed to bind everyone being applied selectively, according to the balance of power. He also warned that multilateralism is being weakened by inward turns, unilateralism and narrow self-interest, at the moment it most needs to be protected and strengthened.

From that, he said, Algeria’s conviction is firm: security cannot be separated from justice, stability from legitimacy, or development from peace. A fairer international order cannot be built without redress for oppressed peoples seeking self-determination.

On that basis, he said, Algeria entered a track at the start of this year aimed at helping shape a lasting and just political solution to the Western Sahara question. A fair and final settlement, he argued, would bring justice to the Sahrawi people and open a new horizon of security and stability for the region. He called for an outcome that ends the dispute, does justice to the people of Western Sahara, protects the credibility of the United Nations, and strengthens regional security, stability and integration. Any departure from those constants, or any attempt to bypass them, would only push a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution further away.

Attaf said Algeria was following, with surprise and legitimate concern, attempts to strip the Western Sahara issue of its core character as a decolonization question and reduce it to a refugee matter alone. Refugees, he said, are the result of occupation that drove them into displacement. They are the holders of a just cause and defenders of an inherent right to self-determination. He warned against bypassing international legitimacy and the United Nations doctrine and practice on decolonization, denying the Sahrawi people that right, or legitimizing a fait accompli imposed on Western Sahara.

He also renewed Algeria’s full and unconditional support for the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, above all the right to an independent, viable and fully sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. He condemned attacks on Palestinian civilians and called for respect for international decisions so Palestinians can exercise their national rights, and for a serious international stand against what he described as a machine of extermination in Gaza and the West Bank.

Attaf expressed regret that efforts to open paths toward ending the conflict in the Gulf have stalled. He renewed Algeria’s support for those efforts and urged those leading them to persist despite the difficulty. He condemned the escalation against states and peoples of the region, renewed full solidarity with the Gulf, and called for dialogue and restraint before the cost of containing the conflict exceeds what anyone can bear.

He condemned attacks on the sovereignty of Lebanon and Syria by what he called the Zionist occupier, and renewed Algeria’s solidarity with their leaderships and peoples. He also condemned what Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen are enduring, and restated support for legitimacy, unity and territorial integrity in those countries, rejecting any effort to dismantle their institutions, weaken their states, or turn their crises into open arenas for foreign intervention.

Algeria’s security, he said, cannot be separated from the security of its surroundings. Solidarity and good neighborliness are a settled choice: the stability of the neighborhood is a shared interest, a shared responsibility and a shared duty.

He said Algeria does not see the Sahel only as a space of security crises, but as an integrated human and historical space where security and development challenges meet, and where political considerations intersect with economic, social and humanitarian ones. Algeria encourages dialogue and reconciliation and supports sincere efforts to treat the causes and roots of crises, with full respect for sovereignty, independence, national unity and territorial integrity.

Attaf recalled what he called the sound analysis of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, which recent developments in the region had confirmed: the Sahel’s problems cannot be reduced to security, lasting stability cannot be built on a military approach alone, and the symptoms of crisis cannot be treated while their deep causes multiply. Because Algeria sees the Sahel’s security and stability as its own, he said, it is backing the efforts and capacities of states in the region.

That includes continued support for energy capacity and infrastructure, completion of the remaining sections of the Trans-Saharan Highway by Algerian companies, the inauguration two days earlier of a fiber-optic link with Niger, and work on regional energy integration built around the Trans-Saharan gas pipeline, in a partnership that shares gains.

That, Attaf concluded, is the meaning Algeria gives to good neighborliness under the president’s guidance: protecting security together, building development together, and opening a path that moves the peoples of the region from crisis to reassurance, and from fragility to stability and a dignified life.