It has been 50 years since the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as Western Sahara, declared its independence. Yet it can be argued that such declaration carries little weight, since the Sahrawi Republic today does not control all of its declared de jure territory. In fact, this state is one of the last non-decolonised and non-self-governing territories in Africa. This is because of the apathy formalised by the international community, but most importantly, because of the compounded interests of its former colonisers and its northern neighbour, Spain and Morocco, respectively.
The seed for abandonment
The colonisation of the Sahrawi people began when they became subjects of Spanish rule in the 19th century, following the establishment of the first settlement at Villa Cisneros and the recognition of Spanish claims in the region by European colonisers at the Berlin Conference of 1884. The colony did not report many economic benefits beyond its fishing and phosphate industries, especially with the several raids by Sahrawi tribesmen in the colony. After the establishment of the Western Sahara as a province of Spain in 1958, violence still plagued the region, and it increased significantly after the consolidation of an armed group against colonial occupation in 1973: The Polisario Front.
When this armed group, the Polisario Front, was able to secure stronger positions against an already weak Francoist regime in 1975, the Moroccan authorities orchestrated the Green March. This demonstration traversed into the Spanish Sahara to pressure Spain to cede the territory to Morocco, as Morocco considered that it had legitimate claims to the land. This position clashed with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion, which did not find proper links to sovereignty by Morocco – nor Mauritania – and held that the right of self-determination prevailed over the claims. Nevertheless, because of the pressure exerted, in the Madrid Accords, Spain gave in and agreed with Morocco and Mauritania to end the Spanish presence in Western Sahara, thereby dismissing any Sahrawi claims. This led to the Western Sahara War from 1975 until 1991, mainly between Morocco and the Polisario Front. Because of the conflict, many Sahrawis fled the region to bordering countries as refugees, many of whom remain in refugee camps like Tindouf in Algeria.
MINURSO: the attempt by the international community
The Western Sahara War ended with a ceasefire in 1991, established by the Settlement Plan between both parties and a UN Security Council Resolution establishing a UN peacekeeping mission. MINURSO, or the Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, has the mission to monitor the ceasefire between the parties, ensuring the release of prisoners of war, and supporting the call for a referendum in the territory. Even though the violence was reduced significantly in scale after the peacekeeping mission and prisoners of war were liberated, the process reached a stalemate, and there was no feasible path for a referendum. Furthermore, there have been reports denouncing human rights violations by Moroccan authorities against Sahrawi people, as well as violent confrontations in Sahrawi camps.
Efforts to achieve a comprehensive agreement were renewed in the early 2000s by James Baker, a UN special envoy, in his well-known Baker Plan. A first attempt envisioned a devolution regime by Morocco to the region, but later it became a plan that led to a referendum by creating a Saharan autonomous authority that could call it after a five-year period. Spanish presidents Aznar, Zapatero and Rajoy in their different governments, agreed that the plans towards a referendum plan were sought to be looked forward to, yet in different degrees while trying to maintain neutrality. However, Zapatero did start to steer towards a more Moroccan solution to the conflict, as an autonomous region.
Current situation: Mohamed VI imposes while Sánchez concedes
The situation would not see any major changes until 2020 when violent confrontations erupted again between the Sahrawis and Moroccan authorities. A road connection was blocked by protesters against occupation, pushing the Moroccan authorities to act in retaliation. At the end of that same year, the US backed the plans and the sovereignty of Morocco over the Western Sahara as part of normalising relations with Israel.
This turn offered new opportunities for Moroccan authorities to push further for their political objectives in the Sahara. They delayed bilateral meetings with Spain. Furthermore, Spain’s decision to admit Polisario leader Brahim Ghali to a hospital in Logroño led to a full-blown diplomatic crisis the following year. The tensions translated into chaos at the land border with thousands attempting to cross the border between Spain and Morocco, and Sánchez visited Ceuta to defend the territorial integrity of Spain. In this context of tensions, Moroccan officials used Pegasus – a spyware software – on Spanish government officials to monitor them, to have guarantees on their diplomatic and not-so-diplomatic undertakings.
The negligence of the Spanish government to respond to such attacks only set the path to have secret talks with the Moroccan authorities to calm the tensions. Such talks finally led to Pedro Sánchez admitting in 2022 – in a personal letter to Mohamed VI – that the plans of Morocco are the pathway to a solution in the Western Sahara, thus dismissing, much like the Trump administration, the international instruments already in place. This position also paved the way for other countries, like France or the United Kingdom, to also agree with Moroccan stances.
Because of this, MINURSO now appears as an instrument incapable of providing a credible solution to the conflict nor a referendum for this territory. The Spanish authorities, with no interest from the get-go to engage sensibly with the colonisation issue, have once again folded to the pressures of Morocco. Spain ensures its enclaves in Africa and handles its intelligence fiasco, while Morocco sets the last strokes to finalise its plan to fully realise its vision of the Sahara. And the Sahrawi are once again disregarded, forgotten and abandoned on the international stage.
By Jaime de la Jara Hernanz
May 8, 2026
Disclaimer: Pedro Sánchez and Mohamed VI meet in Rabat (Image Credit: La Moncloa – Gobierno de España | Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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