Morocco tightens its grip on Western Sahara

The abrupt end of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara last Sunday strengthens Morocco’s hold on the territory and snuffs out hopes for a referendum on its future.

Thirty-five years after the start of their mission, UN peacekeepers this week started packing up and moving out of Western Sahara, a desert territory three times the size of Ireland on the Atlantic coast of north Africa. Their departure followed deadlock in the security council a few days earlier after the United States failed to push through a resolution that would have extended its mandate for a maximum of one year and changed its terms.

The US is the most powerful backer of Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara and its proposal for limited autonomy in the territory. But Rabat has been gaining more support in recent years, including from security council members France and Britain and the territory’s former colonial power in Spain.

The UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) was established in 1991 following a ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which represents the indigenous Sahrawi people. When Spain withdrew in 1975, Morocco and Mauritania asserted control over different parts of the territory, although the International Court of Justice concluded that neither country’s claims of sovereignty were valid.

About 50,000 Sahrawis fled to refugee camps in Tindouf in neighbouring Algeria in 1976 after Morocco annexed Western Sahara. The same year, the Sahrawis established the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the Polisario announced an armed campaign to secure self-determination.

Fifteen years later, the UN deployed MINURSO to maintain the ceasefire and oversee a promised referendum that would allow the people of Western Sahara to determine their own future. But amid disputes over voter rolls and eligibility, the referendum never happened and about half the Sahrawi population remains in refugee camps in Algeria where they depend on international aid.

Morocco has been increasingly assertive in the diplomatic pursuit of its claim to Western Sahara and the US recognised its sovereignty over the territory in 2020. This was in return for Rabat signing up to the Abraham Accords and starting to normalise its relations with Israel.

Two years later, Spain agreed to back Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara as part of a diplomatic deal to end a dispute over Moroccan migrants crossing into the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. France backed the autonomy plan in 2024 and Britain followed suit a year later after Rabat agreed to grant contracts to British companies for the 2030 World Cup.

Morocco welcomed the withdrawal of the peacekeeping mission this week but Polisario described it as “an unacceptable decision” and threatened to withdraw from the UN-backed peace process. Polisario has few military or diplomatic options to resist the momentum behind Morocco’s autonomy proposal but there may be a more promising route through the courts.

In October 2024, the European Court of Justice struck down an EU-Morocco trade and fisheries agreement that included Western Sahara because the Sahrawi people were not included in the negotiations. The court ruled that Morocco had no sovereignty over Western Sahara and that no agreement affecting the territory could be concluded without the consent of its people.

Polisario cited that precedent last month when it initiated proceedings in Spanish courts to order Ryanair to cancel its routes from Madrid and Lanzarote to Dakhla in Western Sahara. The group hopes that such actions can undermine Morocco’s economic ambitions in Western Sahara and deter European companies from investing in the territory.

Neale Richmond, Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, told the Dáil last May that the Government remains committed to UN efforts to achieve “a just and lasting political solution that will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”. Those efforts suffered a serious setback this week.

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