Western Sahara: the six-decade battle to liberate Africa’s final colony

Western Sahara is the territory in north-west Africa bordered by Morocco within the north, Algeria and Mauritania within the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. A former Spanish colony, it’s listed by the United Nations as certainly one of solely 17 territories that stay with out self-government.

Since turning into unbiased from France in 1956, Morocco has been claiming sovereignty over Western Sahara. Within the late Seventies, the dominion formally annexed round 80% of Western Sahara, over which it workouts de facto management. This adopted the so-called “Green March” of 6 November 1975 wherein between 100,000 and 350,000 Moroccans resettled in Western Sahara to

regain the southern provinces of a Higher Morocco.

This annexation flew within the face of the advisory opinion of the Worldwide Court docket of Justice made on 15 October 1975. The court docket concluded that proof introduced earlier than it did

not set up any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco or the Mauritanian entity.

The court docket additionally found that there have been no authorized obstacles to the decolonisation of Western Sahara. This contains the appropriate to self-determination via the free and real expression of the desire of the folks of the territory.

The UN Safety Council established the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara in April 1991. The plan supplied for a cease-fire, adopted by a referendum on self-determination wherein the folks of Western Sahara would select between two choices: integration with Morocco or plain and easy independence. Due to disputes over who can vote within the referendum, it has but to be organised.

I’ve been finding out the battle in Western Sahara as a part of my PhD research for the previous 4 years. It’s my discovering that the Western Sahara stalemate stems from weaknesses within the UN mission mandate. That is primarily as a result of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara has no mandate to watch human rights abuses in Western Sahara.

The absence of a devoted mechanism has affected and continues to have an effect on the visibility of occasions on the bottom. For instance, protesters within the occupied territory of Western Sahara are repeatedly subjected to human rights violations throughout demonstrations. This will increase the opportunity of extra violations that impair the seek for justice and accountability.

Including a human rights monitoring mechanism to the mandate of the UN’s Western Sahara mission wouldn’t mechanically resolve the battle. There are different dynamics, together with the truth that the case of Western Sahara has been handled in a definite method from the beginning. However my findings underline the truth that a mechanism could be helpful to battle administration, if not battle decision.

Absence of human rights mandate

There are 4 present peacekeeping deployments of the United Nations that don’t have any human rights monitoring mandate. The primary, in Northern Cyprus, was arrange by the Safety Council in 1964 to stop additional combating between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. The second, in Lebanon, is the one peacekeeping pressure at sea. The third is a disengagement observer force within the Israeli-Syrian sector, whereas the fourth is the Western Sahara UN mission.

The Western Sahara mission additionally stands out as not having attained its goal via the organisation of a referendum. Earlier UN missions charged with this activity did organise referendums in Namibia and in East Timor. The 2 profitable missions had some form of human rights oversight mechanism stemming from their mandates.

My analysis sought to know the extent to which the absence of human rights monitoring elements is an anomaly in right this moment’s peacekeeping observe. I additionally sought to analyze the connection between human rights and peacekeeping within the Western Sahara battle. Of word is the truth that Morocco opposes a human rights mandate on the grounds that it isn’t the core goal of the mission and it might jeopardise the negotiation course of.

My challenge has two dimensions. Firstly, it goals to determine why the Western Sahara UN mission is an outlier case by way of human rights provisions in peacekeeping observe. I conclude that the monitoring of human rights by the mission needn’t be understood as antagonistic to the first goal of UN intervention, which is to resolve the battle via a negotiated political answer that may present for self-determination.

Secondly, it explores methods via which this absence of express language within the mandate is – or will be – remedied in observe based mostly on authorized doctrine and methodology. By establishing the emergence in customary worldwide legislation of a norm of human rights monitoring for peacekeeping operations, I’m able to strengthen the idea of a extremely irregular nature of the UN’s Western Sahara mission.

Hope after deadlock

A number of components have signalled a renewed curiosity on this protracted battle. The African Union in 2014 appointed a special envoy for Western Sahara. Extra lately, main occasions have begun to problem the established order.

The struggle resumed on 13 November 2020 following nearly 30 years of ceasefire. For the primary time, a UN member state – the US – recognised Morocco’s declare to sovereignty over the territory. Former US president Donald Trump’s declaration of 10 December 2020 has not been renounced by the present Biden administration. It secured Morocco’s help for Israel as per the Abrahamic Accords.

But, in September 2021, the Basic Court docket of the European Union issued decisions invalidating fisheries and commerce agreements between Morocco and the EU insofar as they prolonged to Western Sahara, rejecting Morocco’s sovereignty.

It have to be emphasised that the folks of Western Sahara reserve to proper to self-determination. The final colony in Africa stays largely beneath occupation and the UN mission in place continues to be disadvantaged of any form of human rights monitoring. This case should finish – with freedom, and sovereignty lastly received by Western Sahara.