This diversion has been reconfirmed by the report of the World Food Programme (WFP), in its evaluation of the “strategic country program Algeria 2019/2022”, noted Heydt in an article published on “Maglor.fr”, media of the Maghreb world.
The expert stressed that the WFP has documented irrefutably the diversion and sale of food from humanitarian aid in the markets of the Algerian city of Tindouf, outside the camps, as well as in neighboring countries, at a time when the population of the camps lives in undignified conditions, marked by chronic undernutrition, especially among women and children.
Most seriously, WFP has again expressed concern about the lack of registration and census of the population in the Tindouf camps, underlined Heydt, who is also a research associate at the University of Haute Alsace in France.
It is also an exceptional situation in the world with regard to international humanitarian law insofar as for nearly 50 years this population has never been identified, nor registered as refugees, nor counted, which has deprived it of all the rights guaranteed by the Convention of July 28, 1951 relating to the Status of Refugees, he added.
The report also pointed out the impossibility for the UN specialized agencies to have unhindered access to the camps, calling the internal control of the distribution of humanitarian aid carried out by the “polisario” of biased control by nature, he noted.
According to him, this control granted by Algeria to these militias of the distribution of humanitarian aid is part of the broader framework of the illegal delegation under international humanitarian law of authority over the camps of Tindouf to an armed separatist group that has close links with terrorist groups operating in the Sahel.
He emphasized that the lucrative opportunities opened by the systematic diversion of humanitarian aid to the leaders of the “polisario” allows them to maintain a luxurious lifestyle, at the expense of the European taxpayer and of women and children in the camps of Tindouf, delivered to the throes of chronic anemia.
