West-Sahara

The United Nations Security Council has extended the UN peacekeeping mission in the disputed Western Sahara for a year, expressing concern at the breakdown of the 1991 ceasefire between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front and calling for a revival of UN-led negotiations.

The fighting in Western Sahara, which broke out again in November 2020, remains of low intensity. Yet outside powers would be wrong to assume that it will not escalate. With U.S. support, the new UN envoy should pursue confidence-building measures that could facilitate negotiations.

United Nations Secretary‑General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Staffan de Mistura of Italy as his Personal Envoy for Western Sahara.

The Court of Justice of the European Union on Wednesday said it has canceled two agricultural trade agreements with Morocco concerning the disputed Western Sahara region, saying the North African country did not have the consent of local inhabitants affected. … The EU ruling was embraced by Sahrawi activists as a small victory over Morocco. Some Moroccan nationalists, on the other hand, blasted the move, accusing the EU of "attacking Moroccan sovereignty".

Spain’s justice reopened a case for crimes against humanity targeting Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali who has been hospitalized since April 2021 in a facility in Logrono in northern Spain after entering the country with a forged identity.

Morocco’s reported use of a drone strike to kill a senior Western Sahara independence fighter would, if confirmed, mark a turning point in the decades-long conflict, experts say.

Clashes have broken out in Western Sahara, ending a 30-year ceasefire between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front. Fighting could intensify absent outside help. The UN should fill its empty special envoy post, while the U.S. leads international efforts to restart diplomacy.

Spain is pushing for a U.N.-brokered solution to the long-running dispute over its former colony, Western Sahara, after a dispute erupted between Morocco and Germany over the territory. The dispute between Morocco and Germany started earlier this month after Berlin criticized a decision last year by then-U.S. President Donald Trump to recognize Rabat’s claim to sovereignty over the desert region.

Generations of young Sahrawis have grown up in Algeria's remote desert refugee camps largely forgotten by the outside world and now see no prospect of an independent homeland in Western Sahara except through a new war their leaders say has already begun.

Western Sahara’s pro-independence Polisario Front has bombarded the Guerguerat buffer zone under Moroccan control in the far south of the desert territory in an attack Rabat described as part of a “propaganda war”.