UN mission mandate expired: Western Sahara mission will be “liquidated”

One of the oldest UN missions in the world is history. The mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) expired on Saturday 31 October after the extension of its mandate failed in the UN Security Council on Friday.

Russia blocked the draft resolution presented by the USA for the extension with its veto, so the draft fell through. In the 15-member Security Council, eleven countries voted in favor; China and two other countries abstained.

The text of the resolution would have renamed the mission from Minurso to Minuso and deleted the reference to a referendum. He echoes the US position, which recognizes Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara, and calls Morocco's proposal for limited autonomy for the territory "the only" basis for a solution to the Western Sahara conflict - rather than, as recently, "one" basis.

The position of the USA and Morocco is met with sharp opposition from Algeria, which hosts the Western Sahara liberation movement Polisario on its territory. Algeria is allied militarily with Russia, Morocco with the USA. After its veto, Russia presented its own draft resolution on Friday that would have preserved the Minurso in its previous form. Only Russia, China and Somalia voted for this. The USA voted against, eleven countries abstained.

Minurso currently has 201 civilian and 158 military personnel and has been in Western Sahara since 1991. After Spain's withdrawal in 1975, the former Spanish colonial territory was unilaterally occupied by Morocco; the anti-colonial liberation movement Polisario fled with parts of the civilian population to Algeria and from there took up guerrilla warfare.

In 1988, Morocco and the Polisario accepted a UN peace plan that called for sending a UN observer mission to monitor a ceasefire as well as holding a referendum on the territory's future status - independence or integration into Morocco. According to the 1988 agreement, “all Sahrawis named in the 1974 census organized by the Spanish authorities and who are 18 years of age or older” would be eligible to vote.

There were only around 70,000 people back then, and many of them are no longer alive today. The Sahrawis who fled back then live with their descendants in Polisario-run refugee camps near the Algerian city of Tindouf. According to estimates, around 170,000 Sahrawis now live under Polisario control in Algeria and around 160,000 under Moroccan control in Western Sahara.

Even after fifty years, the Polisario continues to insist on the implementation of the referendum agreement in its original form, dominates the refugee camps and controls the unpopulated desert within Western Sahara along the border with Mauritania and Algeria. Morocco sees Western Sahara as part of its historical territory, has taken possession of the area with hundreds of thousands of settlers and is taking a hard line against any movement for independence.

The Polisario unilaterally canceled the ceasefire agreed in 1991 in 2020, and since then there have been repeated attacks on each other. Meanwhile, more and more countries have recognized Morocco's position. The African Union readmitted Morocco in 2017, the US under Donald Trump recognized Morocco's control of Western Sahara in 2020, later followed by France and Spain and other countries, the UN Security Council recognized Morocco's autonomy plan in 2025.

The UN Mission Minurso itself stopped its referendum preparations in Western Sahara and thus the basis for its deployment twenty years ago, and the position of UN special envoy for Western Sahara has been vacant since the resignation of former German Federal President Horst Köhler in 2019. Minurso has been led by a Russian diplomat since 2021 - he is now falling victim to his own country's veto.

After the end of their mandate, the UN employees in Western Sahara are now packing their bags. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed on Sunday that the “liquidation” of the mission was now beginning and called on both sides to cooperate. This shouldn't be a problem. Morocco has welcomed the end of the UN presence. Algeria and the Polisario welcomed the Russian veto. Nobody outside the UN sheds a tear for Minurso.