Western Sahara: US pushes autonomy under Morocco as sole basis for talks

A US draft resolution circulated to Security Council members on 22 October would rename the UN mission in Western Sahara, strip the referendum from its mandate, and make autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty the only basis for negotiations — days before that mandate expires on 31 October.

The draft would rename the operation the "United Nations Mission for Western Sahara," removing the reference to the referendum that gives MINURSO its name. It would end the current peacekeeping mandate after six months and convert the mission into a special political mission until 31 October 2027. It promotes what it calls "genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty" as the only viable solution and makes Morocco's expanded and updated autonomy proposal the sole basis for further negotiations.

The Security Council is scheduled to vote on 31 October on whether to renew the mission. The US has pressed for a year to reconsider MINURSO, with options including ending it, scaling it back to monitoring, or transforming it to implement autonomy.

Bah El Mad Abdallah, the Sahrawi ambassador to South Africa, said in an interview published by Algérie 54 on 22 October that the draft could undermine international law and the Sahrawi right to self-determination. Excluding independence in advance, he said, would prejudge the political process, and MINURSO's mandate must remain consistent with relevant UN resolutions and the UN–OAU settlement plan.

Sidi Mohamed Omar, the Polisario Front's representative to the UN and coordinator with MINURSO, called the draft an unprecedented departure from international law and from the UN's treatment of the territory as a decolonisation issue.

MINURSO was created to organise a referendum on the territory's future. A mandate rewrite that removes the referendum reference and names autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the only path could lock in an outcome before negotiations resume. The vote on 31 October will test whether the Council treats Western Sahara as a decolonisation file or a security file.