ABSTRACT
During the 8th Congress, President Abdelaziz also showed that the will was present to respect human rights and to break with the past. He announced that victims of the internal human-rights violations would be declared martyrs of the liberation struggle in the same way that victims under Moroccan occupation had been. The Polisario Front sees itself as a liberation movement of the entire population and thus as a mass movement: all adult Saharawis are members with rights except for ‘deserters’ to Morocco. On 27 February 1976, one day before the formal withdrawal of the Spanish army from Western Sahara, the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was proclaimed in Bir Lehlou, by the pro-Polisario Provisional Saharawi National Council. The developments concerning the constitution and institution- building in the SADR exile state confirm the preoccupations. All institutions which the Popular Congress of 1991 had decreed were envisioned for implementation in the independent state, in either changed or new form.
