On 6 November 1975, six days after Moroccan troops pushed into the territory, hundreds of thousands of Moroccan civilians streamed south under military escort. Branded the \u201cGreen March\u201d, it was, in effect, an invasion and the start of a military occupation of Sahrawi land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decadesDubbed \u201cAfrica\u2019s last colony,\u201d Western Sahara is roughly the size of the United Kingdom and remains the continent\u2019s only territory still awaiting decolonisation. Yet on 31 October this year, that goal slipped further from reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marking the 50th anniversary of Morocco\u2019s incursion, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution that, by endorsing Rabat\u2019s autonomy plan, lent weight to Morocco\u2019s sovereignty claim over the territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UN has now set aside a principle it has long held sacrosanct: the right of peoples to self-determination. That was the framework that had guided its approach to the Sahrawis for more than three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lebsir speaks to IPS by videoconference from the Tindouf camps in western Algeria. Nearly 2,000 kilometres southwest of Algiers, this harsh desert where summer temperatures can touch 60C has been the closest thing to home the Sahrawi people have known for 50 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe faced a choice: remain in Algeria as refugees, or build the machinery of a state, with its ministries and a parliament,\u201d recalls Lebsir, now a senior representative of the Polisario Front. Founded in 1973, it is recognised by the United Nations as the \u201clegitimate representative of the Sahrawi people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On arriving in Tindouf in 1975, Lebsir was tasked with setting up schools in the camps. He later oversaw cohorts of Sahrawi students in Cuba, spent a decade in the Sahrawi Parliament and served in the SADR\u2019s Ministries of Justice and Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was in that parliament that the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed in February 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter a century of Spanish presence, we never imagined Madrid would leave and abandon us to our fate,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s no going back: either we have an independent state, or our people will be buried.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the Polisario declared independence in 1976, the UN reaffirmed the Sahrawis\u2019 right to self-determination. But the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), created in 1991, has never delivered the vote it was set up to hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tom\u00e1s B\u00e1rbulo was also 17 when Moroccan forces moved in. The son of a Spanish soldier based in Laayoune \u2014Western Sahara\u2019s capital, 1,100 kilometres south of Rabat\u2014, he had returned to Madrid three months before that 6 November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Sahrawis have survived napalm and white phosphorus, persecution, exile, the systematic plunder of their natural resources, and attempts to erase their identity through the influx of hundreds of thousands of settlers,\u201d the journalist and author tells IPS by phone from Madrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n B\u00e1rbulo, whose La Historia Prohibida del Sahara<\/em> Espa\u00f1ol <\/em>(Destino, 2002) is a standard work on the conflict, lays the stalemate chiefly at the door of \u201cMorocco\u2019s unyielding position, often blessed by the Security Council\u2019s major powers.\u201d The UN, he says, \u201chas capitulated to Rabat\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, even the UN does not recognise Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The occupied territory has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963. In legal terms<\/a>, the decolonisation of Western Sahara remains \u201cunfinished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Open-air prison\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The UNHCR estimates that between 170,000 and 200,000 Sahrawis live in Algeria\u2019s desert camps. However, life inside the Moroccan-held territory itself is harder to gauge, since Rabat does not even acknowledge the Sahrawi people exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Understanding living conditions there is equally difficult. Senior observers such as Noam Chomsky have labelled the territory as a \u201cvast open-air prison\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a report<\/a> released last July, UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres noted that Morocco has blocked visits by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOHCHR continues to receive allegations of human rights violations, including intimidation, surveillance and discrimination against Sahrawi individuals, particularly those advocating for self-determination,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite restrictions, international rights groups continue to document abuses. Amnesty International\u2019s 2024 report<\/a> says Rabat curtails \u201cdissent and the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly in Western Sahara\u201d and \u201cviolently represses peaceful protests\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inpsjapan.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/westernsahara2.jpg\")
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