Large numbers of Sahrawi citizens took to the streets in El Aaiún, the largest city in Western Sahara, on Monday, to demand a just United Nations-sponsored solution that guarantees their right to freedom, self-determination, and independence. The demonstrations come as the United States allegedly pushes a draft UN Security Council resolution that would make Morocco’s autonomy plan the sole basis for negotiations over the future of the territory.

The US-drafted text, reportedly circulated among Security Council members on October 22, has drawn strong objections from the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi independence movement, as well as human rights and solidarity organizations. Arguing the proposal risks predetermining the outcome of negotiations by placing Morocco’s plan over Western Sahara at the center of the process, rather than allowing the Sahrawi people to freely decide their political future.

The dispute comes as the Security Council considers the future of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), established in 1991 to support the UN-OAU Settlement Plan, which included a referendum on self-determination.

Polisario Front warns it could withdraw from the peace process

In a letter from October 22 to Aglaia Balta, Greece’s permanent representative to the United Nations and current president of the Security Council, Dr Sidi Mohamed Omar, the Polisario Front’s representative to the UN, strongly rejected the US zero-draft.

Omar said the text “fully reflects the national position of the penholder as well as that of Morocco, the occupying state,” describing it as “another extremely dangerous, unprecedented departure” from international law and the UN framework governing Western Sahara’s decolonization.

He added that the process cannot be reduced to Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025), but must be understood within the wider body of relevant UN resolutions and the original agreement underpinning MINURSO. The mission was established under Resolution 690 (1991), following an agreement between the Polisario Front and Morocco, based on the UN-OAU Settlement Plan.

According to the Polisario Front, changing the framework unilaterally would align the mission with Morocco’s position and undermine international efforts to resolve the territory’s status through decolonization.

“The non-compliance of Morocco, the occupying state, with its commitments under the UN-OAU Settlement Plan, which was adopted unanimously by the Security Council, cannot justify any infringement upon the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and sovereignty over their homeland,” Omar wrote.

Emphasizing that the text “cannot constitute a basis for any deliberations on MINURSO or the peace process in Western Sahara” and warned that, if it passed without “substantive and meaningful changes,” the movement “would have no choice but to disengage from the peace process as a whole.” But remains committed to a just, lasting, and definitive peace.

Morocco’s autonomy plan

One of the main concerns raised by the Western Sahara Research Watch (WSRW) is the reported change in the language of the draft. The text reportedly describes Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the “only basis” for negotiations, strengthening the language of the 2025 resolution, which referred to it as “a basis.”

The WSRW argues that the difference is substantial. While autonomy could theoretically be one option freely chosen by the Sahrawi people, making Morocco’s proposal the sole basis in advance risks narrowing the political choices available to them.

The organization asks, “How can the people freely determine the territory’s future if negotiations may only take place within a model that presupposes Moroccan sovereignty?”

Going farther, the draft describes autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the most feasible solution. This shifts the purpose of negotiations away from determining Western Sahara’s status and towards negotiating the terms of Moroccan control.

The WSRW also warns that the draft’s references to consulting Sahrawis in the territory, in refugee camps, and throughout the diaspora do not guarantee that they will have a decisive role in determining the outcome.

“Being heard is not the same as being allowed to decide,” the organization argues.

The European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH) has also called on the United Nations to uphold international law and the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination.

International law and the question of sovereignty

The Campaign for the Right to Self-Determination of the People of Western Sahara (CODESA) has also rejected the premise that international recognition of Morocco’s claim can determine the territory’s legal status.

“Recognition by third states cannot turn occupation into sovereignty,” the organization argues.

Western Sahara remains on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. In its 1975 advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice found that the materials and information presented to it did not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between Western Sahara and Morocco that would displace the application of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the territory’s people.

CODESA also points to the UN General Assembly Resolution 34/37, adopted in 1979, which deplored Morocco’s continued occupation of Western Sahara and reaffirmed the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence. It further cites the UN Legal Counsel’s 2002 opinion on the legality of resource exploration in the territory and the 2024 rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, reaffirming Western Sahara’s separate and distinct status from Morocco.

CODESA maintains that a political outcome cannot be declared in advance and then presented as self-determination. It invokes UN General Assembly Resolution 1541 (XV), which sets out principles relevant to the exercise of self-determination, including that integration with another state must result from the freely expressed wishes of the people through an informed and democratic process.

The organization also objects to the United States’ prominent role as facilitator, arguing that a mediator that has already recognized Morocco’s claim cannot be assumed to be impartial. It maintains that negotiations must allow the parties to present their positions without imposing one party’s proposal as the only acceptable framework.

“Negotiations in which only the occupying power’s proposal may be discussed are not negotiations; they are terms of surrender offered to the occupied people,” CODESA says.

Over the years, Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara has gained diplomatic support as several countries have shifted their positions towards recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory rewarded by trade deals.  But these diplomatic changes have not resolved the central question of Western Sahara’s future, and the right of the Sahrawi people to determine their own political status. 

On a gravel plain in northern Western Sahara, with no shade for miles, there is a heap of stones 54.5 meters (179 feet) long. Two rows of stone slabs run out from it like the arms of a V that never quite closes. Archaeologists call these rows “antennae”, and the monuments antennae tumuli (a tumulus […]

In April 2021, I told The Guardian that Sahrawi activists were having their phones and internet connections hacked.

At the time, we could describe what was happening to us. We could not see the machinery behind it.

Five years later, Amnesty International’s new investigation, “We Start With the Verdict”: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, gives those warnings a disturbing new context.

Amnesty describes a surveillance ecosystem involving spyware, physical surveillance, location tracking, informants, judicial pressure and smear campaigns. Western Sahara is not peripheral to its findings.

The organisation devotes a case study to Sahrawi activists and reports that a former member of Morocco’s domestic intelligence service, identified as “Safir,” described Sahrawis and Riffians as priority intelligence targets, including beyond Morocco. Amnesty says it independently verified his identity, employment and key elements of his testimony.

The report also contains forensic evidence involving Pegasus spyware and documents cases connected to Sahrawi activism that reached European territory.

The people Amnesty examined are the tip of the iceberg. They are documented cases: people researchers could interview, devices they could examine, or targets for whom other evidence was available.

Surveillance is secret by design. Most people never learn that their phones have been compromised, and most suspicious devices will never reach a forensic laboratory.

That is why the chronology matters.

Chilling effect

On 8 April 2021, The Guardian quoted my warning that Sahrawi activists’ “phones and internet connections are hacked.” We were describing the symptoms years before Amnesty’s latest investigation exposed more of the machinery.

But surveillance is not simply about collecting information.

When a security service knows who an activist speaks to, where that person travels and what exists inside a phone, information can become power.

Amnesty documents cases in which private information gathered through surveillance later appeared in media coverage and coordinated smear campaigns against human rights defenders.

The organisation is careful: it could not independently establish the source of every piece of private material published. But it says the nature of some material raises serious concerns that surveillance-derived information may have reached media actors.

For Sahrawis, that raises an obvious question: How does private information about activists move from their lives and devices into the public sphere?

That question deserves independent forensic investigation.

But Amnesty’s report should provoke another examination — this one in Washington and European capitals.

For decades, Western governments have built close security relationships with Morocco around counterterrorism, intelligence cooperation, migration and regional stability.

The question is not whether those relationships should exist. It is whether the West has adequately examined what happens to security capabilities once they are in the hands of its partners.

Amnesty does not establish that every security capability Morocco obtained through Western cooperation was used against Sahrawis. The evidence does not support such a sweeping conclusion.

It does, however, justify harder questions.

What safeguards accompanied security cooperation? Who monitored end use? What happens when capabilities developed or acquired in an environment shaped by counterterrorism are directed toward peaceful human rights activism?

That is the line separating security from repression.

Western Sahara struggle

The contradiction is especially striking because Sahrawi human rights activism has often relied on peaceful means: demonstrations, documentation, journalism and engagement with international institutions.

Amnesty reports restrictions on expression and assembly concerning Sahrawi rights, alongside reports of arbitrary arrests, prolonged surveillance, restrictions affecting families and the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations.

Europe has encountered similar contradictions in its relationship with Morocco.

In June 2021, the European Parliament explicitly rejected Morocco’s use of border control and migration, particularly involving unaccompanied minors, as political pressure against Spain.

Yet the same resolution emphasised the longstanding relationship and cooperation between the European Union and Morocco in counterterrorism, migration and trade.

That contradiction should matter to Europeans.

When democratic governments make another state indispensable for stopping terrorism, controlling migration or providing intelligence, they provide more than resources. They provide leverage. Eventually, fear of losing cooperation can make scrutiny of a partner more difficult.

Europe has confronted another warning sign. In its response to the corruption scandal that engulfed the European Parliament, the Parliament itself denounced alleged attempts by Morocco and Qatar to influence lawmakers and staff through acts of corruption.

These remain allegations. They do not mean that every European position favourable to Morocco was corrupt. But they demonstrate why foreign influence over democratic institutions requires serious scrutiny.

European vs American foreign policy

Western Sahara remains an issue on the United Nations agenda and is tied to a decades-long international process concerning the political future of the territory.

That should matter to an EU that regularly invokes a rules-based international order.

Morocco has rejected previous allegations concerning Pegasus and described earlier Amnesty findings as baseless. Amnesty says it provided Moroccan authorities with a summary of its latest findings before publication and invited a response but received none before the report was published.

Those denials belong on the record.

So does the evidence.

The test of a human rights policy is not only how a democracy responds to abuses by its adversaries. The harder test is what it does when credible allegations concern a security partner.

For Sahrawis, however, this story is older than spyware.

For nearly half a century, generations of Sahrawis have lived through restrictions and documented abuses connected to political expression over the future of Western Sahara. Children have grown into adults watching what can happen when someone speaks publicly: surveillance, imprisonment, smear campaigns, pressure and fear.

After all these years, what Sahrawis are asking for is not complicated.

We are not asking the world to choose an answer for us. Nor should the outcome be written in advance in our favour.

We are asking for something more elementary: Treat the Sahrawi as a free human being, capable of thinking, choosing and expressing a view about the future of the land he or she calls home without fear.

It is easy to live in a democratic society, protected by freedom of expression and equality before the law, and then propose a political solution for a distant people who will have to live with its consequences every day.

But a human question should come before the geopolitical one:

Would you accept for yourself and your children a political order in which expressing your views about your homeland could expose you to surveillance, intimidation or punishment?

A Sahrawi is not a number in a diplomatic file, a detail in a geopolitical bargain or a security problem to be managed.

A Sahrawi is a human being, with a memory, a family, a homeland, an opinion and a future.

After nearly 50 years, perhaps it is time simply to hear that voice as it is, rather than as others interpret it.

Give Sahrawis one day without fear.

One day to speak without surveillance, without pressure and without wondering whether their words will reach their phone, their workplace, their home or their family.

Do not write the answer for them.

Just let them speak.

If any political solution is truly just, why should it fear the voice of the human being who will have to live under it?