Soukaina Amaadour is a Sahrawi woman human rights defender whose work focuses on promoting the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people. She is a member of the administrative committee of the Collective of Sahrawi human rights defenders (CODESA) and member of the Committee of Families of Sahrawi Student Political Prisoners. She is the sister of human rights defender El Hussein Amaadour, a former student movement leader and member of the “Sahrawi Center for Culture and Thought”, and currently in prison for his human rights work. Soukaina Amaadour faces different forms of harassment by the Moroccan authorities due to her human rights work and because of her brother's commitment to defending the rights of the Sahrawi people.
Sahrawi human rights defenders continued to be subjected to intimidation, harassment, questioning, arrest, incommunicado detention, and unfair trials. The right to freedom of assembly remains severely restricted. Permission to hold public gatherings is often denied and demonstrations dispersed by force. Participants, including human rights defenders, have been beaten, arrested or otherwise intimidated. None of the Sahara’s human rights groups is legally registered. Human rights groups are generally viewed by the authorities as supporters of self-determination or “separatists”. Some of these groups have tried to register but with no success
