For the first time since 1991, the United Nations has no peacekeeping presence in Western Sahara. The mission known as MINURSO, sent to organise a vote on whether the territory should become independent or part of Morocco, stopped operating on Sunday and has moved into what the UN calls a liquidation period. That vote never happened.
Nobody in New York had planned an exit. It came about because the Security Council could not agree on Friday. Washington, which drafts the council’s texts on the dispute, proposed a one-year renewal that would also have renamed the operation, dropping the reference to a referendum. Eleven members backed it, but Russia used its veto, with ambassador Vasily Nebenzya arguing that any settlement must be acceptable to both Morocco and the Polisario Front rather than imposed on one side. A rival Russian text calling for a plain extension to October 2027 won just three votes and also met a US no. When the clock struck twelve on Saturday night, its authority simply ran out.
The stakes are not small. The sparsely populated strip of desert on Africa’s Atlantic coast holds phosphates and rich fishing waters. A Spanish colony until the 1970s, it is claimed by Morocco, which has offered self-rule under its sovereignty since 2007, and by the Algeria-backed Polisario, which wants full independence.
At the end it numbered roughly 200 people, civilian and military, drawn from over 35 nations. They were based in Laayoune, at nine outposts on either side of the long sand wall built by Morocco, and in a small office across the border in the Algerian town of Tindouf. A small crew will now dispose of its equipment.
UN chief António Guterres said the departure “does not abrogate” the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination and urged all sides to show maximum restraint, citing the risk of renewed fighting. His envoy Staffan de Mistura will carry on the diplomatic track, while Britain made no secret of its frustration with Moscow.
