Western Sahara Legal Case: The International Law Narrative of Unresolved Conflict

Abstract

The legally and internationally labeled Spanish Sahara is the oldest colonized territory in Africa. Colonized by Spain in 1884, Western Sahara has been an unchallengeable statutory case file in the UN tasks of the dispute between various actors at different times. Following trilateral negotiations, Spain ceded control of this territory to Morocco and Mauritania under the Madrid Agreement of 1976. The Polisario fully refused this treaty and with the help of Algeria waged an armed group to struggle specifically against Morocco. After fifteen years of an intense military fight, the United Nations (UN) brokered a ceasefire in 1991 that terminated the war and established a new phase of a long and pointless peace process. After outlining the history of the Western Sahara conflict, this paper analyzes the question of legality case starting from the settlement plan process through the Baker plans to the 2007 proposals by both parties, and finally clarifies the reasons and motives behind the deadlock in the Western Sahara. Therefore, the United Nations has been fastened in the middle of a perplexed conflict that several parties are directly or indirectly involved in. The key reason for the failure of this statutory question was the lack of management and supervision of serious diplomatic negotiations.