TV channels Western Sahara

Western Sahara's television is the voice of a territory: a single channel serving the Sahrawi community across the camps and the diaspora.

The channel

RASD TV is the television service of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, carrying news and public affairs of the Sahrawi people - from the refugee camps of Tindouf to the communities abroad. It belongs to the state proclaimed by the Polisario Front in 1976, at the start of the conflict over the territory, and its offices and studios stand in Rabuni, the administrative heart of the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria's Tindouf Province. Morocco administers most of the territory itself, while the camps beyond the border have housed much of the Sahrawi population for five decades; the channel is one of the few institutions that reaches them all at once.

Broadcasting from the camps

The channel was established in February 2004, but the harsh conditions of the camps delayed regular broadcasting until 20 May 2009; test transmissions had run through the Hispasat satellite from 2008. It now broadcasts daily for four hours by terrestrial signal across the territory and the camps, and for two hours by satellite toward the rest of Africa, Europe and parts of the Middle East. It works alongside the Sahrawi national radio and the Sahara Press Service, the community's other official voices. Funding and equipment have come in part from solidarity groups in Spain - the Seville-based friendship association with the Sahrawi people among the main backers - where the Sahrawi cause has long found support.

Languages of the diaspora

The schedule - the daily Informativo RASD in Arabic, a weekly bulletin in Spanish, interviews, historical documentaries and cultural magazines - is made mostly in Hassaniya and Modern Standard Arabic, with a share in Spanish, which remains a working language of the camps, a legacy of the colonial decades before 1975. Sahrawi journalists staff the newsroom, and Spanish regional broadcasters were among the channel's early supporters.

For a people spread between the territory and the camps, the channel remains a national screen of its own.