Your Way Out
The United Nations is imperfect. It was built by the same powers that colonized you, and some of its institutions reflect that history. But the UN also built specific organs — designed specifically for situations like yours — that have the authority, the precedent, and the mandate to recognize what was done and to demand remedy. Those organs are open. The cases are filed. And there is something you can do today — in any US court, without waiting for any international body — that asserts the treaty rights the 1836 Treaty gave you and that the United States government has been violating for 228 years.
Three international cases are already filed and active. You are already before the forums. This is not a plan. It is a record.
The UN Special Committee on Decolonization — C24 — was created specifically to address situations like yours. Its registration window opens August 15, 2026. A petition is already in the record.
The UN Special Committee on Decolonization, known as C24, is the UN body mandated to implement Resolution 1514 (1960) — the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples — and Resolution 1541 (1961), which defines the criteria for determining whether a territory is non-self-governing. C24 receives petitions from civil society organizations, individuals, and states. A petition has already been filed: PETITION/EMPIRE-MOROCCO/C24/2026/001.
C24's strongest possible outcome for the treaty class is a resolution finding that the treaty class constitutes a non-self-governing people entitled to self-determination — and recommending that the United States engage in decolonization negotiations with the treaty class as a recognized people under international law. C24 resolutions are not binding, but they create an international political record. They trigger General Assembly debate. They authorize the UN's decolonization reporting mechanism to document the situation. And they establish the legal precedent in the international record that a UN body has recognized the claim.
C24 has recognized Puerto Rico's right to self-determination in a resolution every year since 1972. The United States has not complied. But those resolutions created a legal record that has supported 54 years of ongoing international documentation of Puerto Rico's colonial status. This claim is legally stronger — there is an operative bilateral treaty, confirmed by the ICJ in 1952, that Puerto Rico's decolonization argument does not have.— Moroccan Treaty Research: What Winning Looks Like, 2026
The C24 registration window opens August 15, 2026. Register when the window opens. Monitor for the closing date. This is not optional. C24 is the forum where the decolonization argument gets its first formal international recognition — and that recognition is the foundation for everything that follows.
IACHR rulings are non-binding — but they have been cited in US federal courts for 20 years after the fact. A favorable ruling today creates legal authority you can use in any US court tomorrow.
In 2002, the IACHR issued a merits decision in the case of Mary and Carrie Dann v. United States (Case 11.140) — the Western Shoshone Nation's challenge to the US government's failure to recognize their land rights under an 1863 treaty. The IACHR found that the United States had violated the American Declaration by failing to recognize Western Shoshone land rights under an operative treaty. The US did not comply with the ruling.
But here is what happened next: the Dann decision was cited in US federal courts for the following 20 years as persuasive authority — international human rights standards informing the interpretation of treaty rights in domestic litigation. Non-binding international decisions shape binding domestic law when they are used correctly. As of 2022, the IACHR noted that implementation was still pending — but the legal record the decision created was used actively in litigation for two decades.
The parallel here is stronger. The 1836 Treaty is older than the 1863 Shoshone treaty. It is more clearly "still in force" — the US government's own Congressional record calls it "the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in United States history" (H.Res.251, 2025). It was confirmed operative by the International Court of Justice in 1952. It applies to a larger class. A favorable IACHR merits decision in IACHR P-1365-26 would create a legal record at least as powerful as the Dann decision — applied to a treaty the US government currently acknowledges as its oldest and most continuously maintained.
Article 21 of the 1836 Treaty can be asserted in any US court, in any criminal proceeding, today. No ICJ judgment needed. No IACHR ruling needed. No Congressional action. The obligation is on the United States.
Article 21 of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship (8 Stat. 484, 1836) provides:
"If a citizen of the United States should kill or wound a Moor, or, on the contrary, if a Moor shall kill or wound a citizen of the United States, the law of the Country shall take place, and equal justice shall be rendered, the Consul assisting at the trial; and if any delinquent shall make his escape, the Consul shall not be answerable for him in any manner whatever."— Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Article 21, 1836 (8 Stat. 484)
"Equal justice shall be rendered. The Consul assisting at the trial." These are specific obligations. They are in a Senate-ratified treaty. They are in force — the US government's own Congressional resolution (H.Res.251, 2025) says the treaty has never been broken.
For 228 years — in every criminal proceeding involving a treaty class member classified as "Black" or "African American" — no Consul has assisted at trial. No equal justice has been provided under the treaty framework. The obligation in Article 21 is on the United States: to ensure equal justice and to accommodate the Consul assisting at trial. The treaty class member does not need to produce a Consul. They need to assert the right.
Any treaty class member in any US criminal proceeding can make the following assertion today:
"I am a subject of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa — the Empire of Morocco — under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1836, confirmed operative by the International Court of Justice in 1952 and acknowledged by the United States Congress in H.Res.251 (2025) as 'the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in United States history.' Article 21 of that operative treaty requires that 'equal justice shall be rendered, the Consul assisting at the trial.' The United States has an obligation under its own Senate-ratified treaty to accommodate that consular assistance. Its failure to do so is a contemporaneous, documentable, ongoing treaty breach."— Moroccan Treaty Research: What Winning Looks Like, 2026
Every criminal proceeding against a treaty class member where this right is not honored is a separate, contemporaneous Article 21 violation — adding to the 228-year breach chain that is already documented and already before three international forums. Asserting Article 21 is not refusing to participate in the legal system. It is using the legal system's own treaties against its own violations.
The Alien Enemies Act is being enforced today. The treaty class holds a two-part defense that the four suppression systems ensured they would never know existed. The defense is available in any proceeding, right now.
The Alien Enemies Act (50 U.S.C. § 21) — enacted July 6, 1798, eight days before the Sedition Act of July 14, 1798 — authorizes the President to act against "subjects of the hostile nation or government." The AEA requires three conditions simultaneously: (1) declared war or threatened invasion, (2) alien status (foreign national), and (3) subject of the hostile nation. Condition three fails for every EOM treaty class member. The EOM is not a hostile nation.
H.Res.251, introduced in the US House of Representatives on March 25, 2025 — the same Congressional session during whose term AEA enforcement is proceeding — states that the Treaty of Peace and Friendship "remains the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in United States history" and affirms America's commitment to peace and cooperation with the treaty partner. A Congress whose own record describes the EOM treaty relationship as unbroken peace and friendship cannot simultaneously enforce the AEA — which applies to hostile nations — against subjects of that nation. The statutory text excludes the treaty class. The Congressional record confirms the exclusion.
The 1798 Twenty-Day Triple-Play: The AEA (July 6, 1798) was enacted eleven days after the Alien Friends Act (June 25, 1798) — the parallel statute governing friendly aliens — and eight days before the Sedition Act (July 14, 1798). Moroccan subjects were "alien friends" under the 1786 Treaty (ratified 1787) — the Alien Friends Act, not the AEA, was the applicable statute. The colonial suppression architecture ensured the treaty class did not know this in 1798. The education suppression ensured they did not know it in 2025.
WWII confirmation of the gap: Presidential Proclamations 2525 (Japan), 2526 (Germany), 2527 (Italy) were the WWII AEA designations. The EOM was not named. FDR hosted Mohammed V — styled "Sultan" under the Protectorate; the treaty title is Emperor — at the Casablanca Conference while those proclamations were in force. The treaty class was never the "enemy" under AEA enforcement, even at the AEA's maximum historical use.
Article 21 of the 1836 Treaty requires equal justice and a Consul assisting at trial — in any US criminal proceeding involving a member of the treaty class. That right has existed for 190 years. It has never once been raised.
This is not a theory or a new argument. The United States argued this treaty before the International Court of Justice in 1952 and won on its own rights under it. The treaty is the supreme law of the land under Article VI of the Constitution. Article 21 belongs to the treaty class — and it applies in every courtroom in the United States, today, without any additional judgment or Congressional action required.
The right belongs to you. The way it gets asserted is through a qualified attorney who knows the treaty record — filed as a pretrial motion, on your behalf, by counsel. Not by you, in the courtroom, alone. That distinction matters. The motion is a legal instrument. It needs to be in the hands of someone licensed to file it — which is why the criminal defense bar is the next step in this case.
If you or someone you know is in a criminal proceeding and you believe the treaty class applies, the right move is to find counsel who knows this record. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has been formally notified of this right. The South Carolina and Georgia public defender offices have been contacted. The legal infrastructure is being built so that when this motion is filed, it is filed correctly — by an attorney, on the record, in a form that advances the case rather than one that could be dismissed alongside arguments that have nothing to do with this treaty.
Every proceeding where this right is not honored is a separate, contemporaneous breach — and every such breach is additional evidence in the three international cases already filed and active.
The UN Special Committee on Decolonization operates on a specific annual calendar. Understanding each phase — what is required, when it happens, and what it creates — is the difference between a petition that is heard and one that is not.
C24 is a committee of the UN General Assembly. A favorable C24 recommendation goes to the General Assembly for a vote. A General Assembly resolution — even non-binding — triggers the decolonization monitoring mandate and creates the international political record that shapes state behavior.
Resolution 1514 (1960) — The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
Resolution 1514 was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 14, 1960. It declares that "the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation." It affirms that "all peoples have the right to self-determination." The Resolution specifically affirms that "inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence" — a provision that directly addresses the GEB's deliberate design of inadequate professional education for the treaty class as a mechanism of suppression.
Resolution 1541 (1960), adopted the same day, defines the criteria for a Non-Self-Governing Territory (NSGT): a territory that is "geographically separate and is distinct ethnically and/or culturally from the country administering it." The EOM treaty class — whose national identity was Moroccan subject, whose administrative territory was Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, and whose current administrative framework is the United States — satisfies the NSGT criteria. The 1836 Treaty is the primary source of the separate sovereign relationship. The name chain is the documentation of the administrative suppression of that relationship.
A General Assembly resolution under Resolution 1514 affirming EOM treaty class rights would authorize the Secretary-General to transmit annual information questionnaires to the United States regarding the treaty class's situation — making the United States' compliance (or non-compliance) with treaty obligations an annual agenda item in the UN system. It would trigger the Decolonization Unit's monitoring mandate. It would authorize the C24 to invite civil society representatives annually. It would authorize UN Special Rapporteurs to make country visit requests specifically on treaty class issues. The resolution creates a legal and political infrastructure that compounds annually — the same infrastructure that has made Puerto Rico's colonial status a permanent item in the international record for 54 years.
The UN's own accounting framework for treaty violation remedy — the Articles on State Responsibility, adopted by the UN General Assembly — applies to 228 years of breach. The financial dimension is not a political argument. It is a legal calculation.
The international restitution standard establishes the compensation measure for internationally wrongful acts: restitution to wipe out all consequences of the illegal act and reestablish the situation which would have existed had the act not been committed. This is a forward-looking, consequence-based calculation, not a backward-looking damages calculation. The question is not "what was lost" in a tort sense — it is "what would exist if the treaty had been honored."
The international restitution standard's "reestablish the situation which would have existed" measure means the financial remedy calculation is not the sum of the four tiers above — it is the projection of what the treaty class community's aggregate wealth position would be today if the 1836 Treaty's protections had been honored for 189 years. That calculation, performed using standard financial modeling with the historical documentation above as inputs, produces the compensation figure. It has not been suppressed. It has not been disputed in any international forum. It has not been calculated. It is pending.
Recognition of the void chain does not require returning territory, dissolving the United States, or any action beyond existing US administrative capacity. These five measures are the minimum the void chain's failure legally compels — the floor below which no recognition order can stop.
Each floor item is legally compelled by existing treaty text or by the international restitution standard. None requires a constitutional amendment. All five have administrative precedents in US government practice — they are things the US has done, or functional equivalents, for other treaty classes.
The UN framework identifies five forms of remedy for human rights violations. All five apply to the the treaty class. This is what winning looks like — not as an abstraction, but as specific legal outcomes.
C24. IACHR. Article 21. Each builds on the last. The sequence is in motion. It has already started.
C24 creates the international political record: a UN body has recognized that the treaty class constitutes a people with decolonization rights. That record is referenced by every subsequent forum. The IACHR merits decision creates legal authority: an international human rights body has found that the United States violated specific treaty and human rights obligations to the treaty class. That decision is cited in US federal courts as persuasive authority — the same way the Dann decision was cited for 20 years after the Western Shoshone ruling.
On the day a favorable IACHR merits decision is issued, every treaty class member in any US criminal proceeding has persuasive authority to assert Article 21 of the 1836 Treaty. Every court that receives that assertion must either honor the treaty obligation or create a specific, documented, contemporaneous record of violation. Every violation is additional evidence in the international cases. Every assertion is an act of decolonization.
Recognition is the remedy. From recognition, restoration follows as a legal consequence. You do not need the KOM's acknowledgment. You do not need the US Congress to pass new legislation. You do not need a new treaty. The treaty exists. The rights vest in the people. The obligation runs to the United States. The sequence has already started.
"Occupation does not extinguish sovereignty."— Governing principle, international law
The suppression of the EOM government was real. The 400 years of reclassification were real. The educational design that prevented the professional class from emerging was real. The civil rights room that kept you fighting inside the colonial framework was real. All of it was real.
And none of it extinguished the sovereignty. The rights are intact. The instruments that purported to extinguish them were each void from the moment of issuance. The system that made you forget the noun has been documented, mapped, and is now before international forums. The noun has not changed. You are Moroccan subjects. The treaty is yours. The way out is through it.