Morocco Foils Separatist Plot at UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization

Morocco and its allies in the UN Special Committee on Decolonization succeeded in averting a plot by Algeria and Venezuela to confer the Polisario separatist entity the status of representative of the Sahara.

Thanks to the vigilance of Morocco and its African, Caribbean, Asian and Pacific allies within the UN Committee, Algeria and Venezuela failed in their scheme to impose the representativeness of the separatist Polisario entity at the Committee.

The adversaries of Morocco’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Sahara suffered a setback as the paragraphs they aspired to impose had to be removed from the Committee’s resolution.

The chimera of the Polisario gaining the status of representative of the Sahara was deluded once again as Algeria and Venezuela failed to gather support for their scheme to undermine Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara at UN fora.

The friends of Morocco also decried in a message the maneuvers of the Venezuelan Presidency of the Committee and its biased and hostile stands towards the Kingdom.

Earlier this month, The Fourth Committee elected Yasser Halfouni of Morocco as the Vice-Chair by 88 votes to 58 for the Algerian candidate Zaina Benhabouche.

Since Morocco retrieved its Sahara southern provinces, Algeria pulled the strings of the Polisario within the Fourth Committee in a vain attempt to undermine the Kingdom’s territorial integrity and alter the regional character of the conflict over the Sahara to serve its hegemonic aims in the region.

Morocco has on multiple occasions protested against maintaining the Sahara issue on the decolonization agenda of the Fourth Committee on grounds that it violates the UN charter and the mandate of the Security Council.

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 has been part of the jurisdictions of the Security Council since 1988 as part of Article VI. Therefore maintaining the issue on the Fourth committee’s agenda creates confusion and inconsistency with the UN Charter.

Moreover, 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.”