The United Nations Leadership Role in Solving the Western Sahara Conflict: Progress or Delays for Peace? (original) (raw)
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This paper analyses the consequences of the United Nations' failure to resolve the Western Sahara dispute. 1 The UN Secretariat's lack of transparency in its early effort to get the conflicting parties to agree to hold a referendum to decide the territory's future strengthened the persistent distrust of the UN. Also, the comparatively low human cost of the conflict has made it easier for the Security Council to allow a self-perpetuating peace process to continue rather than to force the parties to make the hard choices needed to resolve the dispute. Moreover, despite its large investments in Western Sahara, the Moroccan government's oppressive occupation policies and its exploitation of the territory's phosphates and fisheries for the primary benefit of non-Sahrawi Morocco mean that Western Sahara's political and economic development has been stunted by the ongoing stalemate. As a response to the stymied development engendered by the long deadlock, the international community could foster educational and perhaps employment opportunities for the Sahrawi refugees in Algeria as long-term alternatives to their unproductive lives in their desert camps. To aid development further, the Moroccan government could be urged to provide more job opportunities in Morocco for Sahrawis seeking to return there.
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This article attempts to provide insight into the long-standing subject of Western Sahara through analysis and criticism. In comparison, all international and regional efforts failed to resolve this situation. That has remained constant since 1975. As a result, this paper will explore the magnitude of this issue, its roots, and the reasons for its decades-long stagnation. On this premise, we have split the subject into four essential elements, which are as follows: The Western Sahara issue is a zero-sum strategy game between the conflicting parties. The involvement of major powers in the issue's impasse will then focus on the United States of America, France, and Russia as new regional actors. Then we try to concentrate on the Guerguerat crisis as a new station for the Western Sahara issue's stalemate. Finally, we will attempt to discuss the deadlock of this issue within the framework of the United Nations, which has likewise failed to find a solution. TRANSLATE with x Eng...
" The Security UN Council and the Saharan Conflict Past and Present Challenges "
One has to recognize that the current impasse in the Saharan conflict has its origin in the conditions under which the 1990 UN Settlement Plan was implemented at the preparatory stage with a view to organizing a referendum. It was indeed these conditions that have made self-determination inapplicable once and for all. These conditions, by casting doubt on the transparency and objectivity of the methods used to determine the electoral body, destroyed the credibility of the entire Plan. One has also to recognize that any attempt to implement self-determination on these grounds would necessarily fail. That is why many international actors have started voicing that a different approach to the Sahara conflict would be necessary and that realistic alternatives would have to be explored. It is in this direction that the Security Council have devoted its efforts since it adopted in 30 April 2007 it resolution 1754 in reaction to the Moroccan Initiative for negotiating an autonomous status for the Sahara region (7 April 2007) and called upon the parties to enter into negotiations without preconditions in good faith with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution. The recommendation made by the Security Council to the parties to negotiate a realistic solution comes at a time when a new paradigm is on the rise with regard to self-determination which is meant to be an instrument aiming not at the disintegration of states but to their integration by promoting co-sharing of power through territorial autonomy. It is not a surprise that the doctrine of International Law does see today in territorial autonomy a mere expression of self-determination. Today, the Sahara question constitutes a major test of the relevance and viability of the paradigm which is coming to light. The acceptance by the international community of the implementation of a system of autonomy in the Sahara will send a strong signal ratifying the end of the era of the paradigm “self-determination equals independence” and the changeover to the right to democratic self-determination. That is why the nature of the solution to the problem of the Sahara involves an issue which goes well beyond the limits of this particular dispute.
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The legally and internationally labeled Spanish Sahara is the oldest colonized territory in Africa. Colonized by Spain in 1884, Western Sahara has been an unchallengeable statutory case file in the UN tasks of the dispute between various actors at different times. Following trilateral negotiations, Spain ceded control of this territory to Morocco and Mauritania under the Madrid Agreement of 1976. The Polisario fully refused this treaty and with the help of Algeria waged an armed group to struggle specifically against Morocco. After fifteen years of an intense military fight, the United Nations (UN) brokered a ceasefire in 1991 that terminated the war and established a new phase of a long and pointless peace process. After outlining the history of the Western Sahara conflict, this paper analyzes the question of legality case starting from the settlement plan process through the Baker plans to the 2007 proposals by both parties, and finally clarifies the reasons and motives behind the deadlock in the Western Sahara. Therefore, the United Nations has been fastened in the middle of a perplexed conflict that several parties are directly or indirectly involved in. The key reason for the failure of this statutory question was the lack of management and supervision of serious diplomatic negotiations.
Western Sahara: Meltdown of a Frozen Conflict
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On 19th April 2016 the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon submitted his report on Western Sahara to the Security Council. He asked the UN restricted body to re-establish and support the mandate of the Mission des Nations Unies pour l’Organisation d’un referendum au Sahara Occidental (MINURSO). The report was issued during a time of tensions between the Secretary General and Morocco, following the visit of Ban Ki-moon in the region. The present analysis will outline the historical roots of what is commonly known as ‘Africa’s last colony’, explaining new developments. Moreover, it will try to suggest recommendations to defuse the crisis, which is affecting the entire region. In effect, while the Western Sahara issue has always been interpreted has a local, limited struggle involving two or three main actors, it could have enduring and dire consequences for the North and West Africa.
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Abstract: Western Sahara conflicts have yet to be definitively resolved. It now belongs to the category of forgotten or frozen conflicts. The conflict itself is not the only issue to have been forgotten. Power politics have overridden questions of international legality despite the ...
Delayed Peace and Tranquillity in Africa’s ‘Last Colony’: What Next for Western Sahara?
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The conflicts in Western Sahara have not been resolved conclusively for 43 years now with some referring to them as ‘frozen’ conflicts in Africa’s last colony. A clear case of decolonisation turned out to be a genesis of displacement and protracted suffering of the Saharawi people from the former coloniser to another handler arguably backed by some invisible external hegemons. This study is a qualitative research using secondary data and thematic analysis to investigate Western Sahara’s unending conflicts and the way forward. Located in the conflict theory, findings indicate that the past failed interventions by the United Nations have been a result of the influence of superpowers wielding levers of power in the United Nations Security Council with vested interests in the country. Morocco the new coloniser is a neighbouring country reluctant to cede power while taping the mineral and water resources which Western Sahara is abundantly endowed with. As the Saharawi people are not obli...