This Friday, the UN Security Council took a key step for the future of the Western Sahara conflict. By 11 votes in favor, three abstentions and without the participation of Algeria, it has approved a resolution drafted by the United States that renews the United Nations mission in the region (Minurso) for one more year and that also supports Morocco’s claim of sovereignty over the territory, by placing the Rabat autonomy plan as the basis for a negotiation that leads to solving the conflict.
The resolution offers the UN’s strongest support yet for Morocco’s plan to maintain sovereignty over the territory, backed by Washington, Spain and most European Union member countries.
The step comes as the 50th anniversary of the mobilization of thousands of Sahrawis that forced the departure of the Spanish Army from Western Sahara is about to be completed, and highlights the renewed involvement of the United States in a territorial dispute that has been stagnant for decades in the Maghreb.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, determined to burnish the peacemaker credentials that he boasts, is willing to add the resolution of this dispute to the conflicts that he claims to have resolved since his return to power at the beginning of this year. His mediator, Steve Witkoff, already made it clear in statements to the CBS television network a couple of weeks ago, when he revealed that his team was working on an understanding between Morocco and Algeria: “In my opinion, there will be a peace agreement within 60 days,” he noted, in an apparent reference to Western Sahara.
The American president had already made the first major turnaround in the situation in his first term, when, contrary to Washington’s traditional policy, on the territory. It was a concession to Morocco to secure the kingdom’s adherence to the Abraham Accords with Israel, which Trump considers one of his great diplomatic achievements.
The turn gave the green light for France and the United Kingdom—like the United States, permanent members of the Security Council—to join this position, and other countries to join the Moroccan formula for autonomy. This Friday’s resolution represents a new step for this reality on the ground to become an international standard.
During his second term, Trump has . Last month, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau encouraged American companies to do business throughout Morocco, “including Western Sahara.” Trump’s envoy to the Arab countries, Masad Boulos, declared this week that Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara is “irreversible” and the Rabat proposal formulated in 2007 for autonomy for the territory is “the best available option.”
The Polisario Front had already addressed the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, to inform him that it is not opposed to including the option of autonomy in the resolution, as long as it is submitted to a referendum along with the path of independence. The organization had also released a statement in which it refused to participate in any political process that did not leave an open door to self-determination through a referendum, and that simply legitimized the “military occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco.”
For its part, Algeria, a current member of the Security Council, had threatened to boycott the vote if the thesis of autonomy as the only way out was maintained. The situation forced a 24-hour postponement of the vote, initially scheduled for Thursday, to try to rectify the text before it was presented to the full Council.
The dispute between Morocco and Algeria over Western Sahara, which has kept the land border between both countries closed since 1994, has its origins in the Moroccan occupation of most of the desert territory in 1975, after the departure of the Spanish Army. Algeria has never claimed the territory, but supports the Polisario Front in its fight for independence against Morocco.
In 1991, a ceasefire agreement was signed between the Polisario and Rabat mediated by the United Nations, which established a peace mission for the area – MINURSO, which has 226 civilians and 245 military personnel deployed in observation tasks – and promised to call a referendum on self-determination a year later.
That consultation has never been held and since 2020 the Polisario Front has considered its ceasefire broken, launching low-intensity attacks against the Moroccan army along the sand wall or embankment that divides the territory of the Sahara in two: a part to the west, controlled by Morocco and which represents 80% of the total, and the east, in the hands of the Sahrawi independentists and which forms 20%. Meanwhile, thousands of Sahrawi refugees remain in the Tindouf camps (southwest Algeria) since 1976, in the midst of an increasingly precarious humanitarian situation.
At the moment, more than 120 countries support Morocco’s autonomy plan and three dozen States have opened consulates in Western Sahara in recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over the territory. Since 1976, a total of 84 countries, mostly African, recognize the unilaterally proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The Polisario Front is considered by the United Nations as a national liberation movement. It has representation in countries like Spain. A year ago, a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union described Polisario as “representative of the Sahrawi people” and did not recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara by ruling against the extension of its agricultural and trade agreements with Brussels to the territory of the former Spanish colony.
