The UN Security Council’s endorsement of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara has attracted wild jubilations across the country. And the country declared 31 October a national holiday to mark this milestone. According to the royal palace, the public holiday which was tagged the Unity Day was to celebrate Morocco’s “national unity and territorial integrity.”
The UN had reportedly approved a resolution describing genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the “most feasible solution” to the 50-year-old conflict over the disputed territory. Although, part of the disputed Western Sahara is still under the control of the Polisario Front, much of the area is very much under the control of Morocco.
The UN resolution was sponsored by the USA and 11 other countries also voted in favour of the resolution. The one year mandate of the UN peacekeeping force was also renewed. Expectedly, Algeria opposed the resolution and Russia, China, and Pakistan also abstained from voting on the resolution. Western Sahara was under Spanish rule until it was later annexed by Morocco in 1975.
The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, which has long contested Morocco’s claim to the territory, has had to fight Morocco in the 1970s and 80s. Morocco and the Polisario Front agreed various ceasefires in the 1990s but the conflict still persists. And since 1991, the United Nations has had to deploy peacekeepers to the region.
“ The United States welcomes today’s historic vote, which seizes upon this unique moment and builds on the momentum for a long, long overdue peace in Western Sahara,” Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., reportedly said in his remarks after the vote. Responding to this positive vote, King Mohammed VI, the Moroccan king, in a rare speech broadcast on Moroccan t elevision after the vote, celebrated the result. He also called for dialogue with Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
“We are starting a new chapter in the process of consolidating the Moroccanness of the Sahara, and closing, once and for all, this fabricated conflict,” the king said. But Sidi Mohamed Omar, the Polisaro ambassador to the U.N., saw this vote differently.
While thanking the allies who abstained from voting, and also Algeria for protesting the vote, Omar claimed that the vote “made it very clear that today’s resolution does not imply any recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.” He continued: “In other words, and in plain English, it does not imply recognition of Morocco’s illegal military occupation of Western Sahara.”
