Cheikh Banga

Cheikh Banga is a Sahrawi human rights defender who works to defend the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination. He is the president of the Sahrawi Committee for Monitoring Human Rights in Assa, a member of the executive office of the Collective of the Sahrawi Human Defenders in Western Sahara, and a member of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights. As a result of his human rights work, Cheikh Banga has been detained multiple times by the Moroccan authorities including two detentions in 2006.

In 2010, he was arrested by the Moroccan Occupation’s Royal Gendarmerie and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Currently, he is serving his sentence in Bouizakarne prison after being transferred between several Moroccan prisons. Despite the harsh detention conditions, which caused severe health complications, Cheikh Banga obtained a Master's degree in Political Science and International Relations in 2022.