Photo: UN Photos/Martine Perret

As MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, enters liquidation, António Guterres has chosen to leave no ambiguity about the fundamental purpose of the UN's involvement in the territory. In a statement [or download here] issued on 1 November through his spokesperson, the UN Secretary-General stressed that the mission's departure "does not abrogate" the inalienable right of the people of Western Sahara to self-determination.

He recalled that MINURSO was established in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and create conditions conducive to a political solution, enabling the people of Western Sahara to exercise that right. Guterres also reaffirmed the UN's commitment to supporting a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution that guarantees self-determination.

The message is particularly significant given the circumstances in which the mission is ending. Just days earlier, the United States, with the support of France and the United Kingdom, had sought to push through a Security Council resolution that would have fundamentally altered MINURSO's identity and political purpose. The American proposal removed the reference to a referendum from the mission's name and sought to make Morocco's autonomy proposal under Moroccan sovereignty the only basis for further negotiations, while describing it as the most feasible solution.

Russia vetoed the American draft on 30 October. A subsequent Russian proposal to simply renew MINURSO's existing mandate, without changing its name or purpose, also failed, receiving only three votes in favour. The United States voted against it, while eleven Council members abstained. 

The result was extraordinary: the Security Council failed to renew a mission that had been present in Western Sahara for 35 years. MINURSO's mandate expired on 31 October.

Morocco's Royal Office celebrated the development as a major step towards the definitive closure of the Western Sahara issue at the United Nations. 

Guterres's statement, however, offers a very different message. The departure of the mission does not settle the question of Western Sahara, does not transfer sovereignty over the territory and, above all, does not extinguish the Saharawi people's right to decide their own future.

There is something striking about the timing of this intervention. It is not the first time a UN Secretary-General has spoken more openly about Western Sahara towards the end of his tenure. In March 2016, Ban Ki-moon visited the Saharawi refugee camps and Bir Lehlu in the part of Western Sahara that is under Polisario’s control, using the word "occupation" to describe Morocco's presence in the territory. Rabat reacted furiously, expelling civilian MINURSO personnel and organising demonstrations against the Secretary-General.

Ten years later, Guterres, in the final months of his mandate, has put another important statement on the record. His words may be less confrontational, but their substance is unmistakable: MINURSO can leave, but the right to self-determination cannot be liquidated. It belongs to the Saharawi people, not to the Security Council, not to Morocco and not to the permanent members of the Council.

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