Why Sahara should be dropped from UN’s fourth committee agenda

Maintaining the Sahara issue on the decolonization agenda of the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly is an anomaly that runs against the UN charter and the mandate of the Security Council.

Listing the Sahara issue on the decolonization agenda is an aberration that is contradicted with Article 12 of the UN charter which clearly stipulates that “while the Security Council is exercising in respect of any dispute or situation the functions assigned to it in the present Charter, the General Assembly shall not make any recommendation with regard to that dispute or situation unless the Security Council so requests.”

The Sahara issue should no longer be examined at the Fourth Committee since it has been part of the jurisdictions of the Security Council since 1988.

Maintaining the Sahara in the fourth committee creates confusion at the UN as the artificial dispute over Morocco’s southern provinces continues to be examined by both the Security Council and the Fourth Committee.

The repercussions of such incoherence has an impact on the credibility as it goes in total contradiction with the Security Council approach, which examines the issue as part of Article VI relating to the peaceful resolution of conflicts

Moreover, the Security Council has never considered the Sahara dispute as a decolonization issue.

The terminology used in the Security Council resolution has never labelled the conflict as a decolonization issue and has never called the Sahara as an occupied territory. The Security Council uses accurate terms calling the Sahara issue a “regional conflict.”