Overview:

• The ongoing territorial dispute has made it impractical for mechanisms of religious recognition to be established that hold region-wide effect because 85% of the region is controlled by Morocco and the remaining 15% by the Polisario Front government.

• Moroccan exportation of its censorial laws on religion and belief means that the region is immediately classified as censorious.

• Therefore, the successful registration of a non-Islamic group in Morocco technically means that the group has registration in the Moroccan-controlled parts of the Western Sahara region.

• Until the conflict in Western Sahara between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) has been resolved, there won't exist opportunities for religious recognition that genuinely cover all parts of the region.

Positive elements:

• Nil.

Recommendations:

• Revoke the censorial Moroccan laws that have been imposed such as bans on proselytism, public expression of belief and conversion from Islam.

• Establish a system that extends opportunities for both existential recognition and legal registration to all belief systems.

• Remove all instances of the politicisation of religion and belief and of the registration procedures.