Keeping Sahara on Fourth Committee Agenda Violates UN Charter- Ambassador

Morocco has strongly protested against maintaining the Sahara issue as part of the decolonization agenda of the UN’s fourth committee.

In an address before the committee, Morocco’s permanent representative to the UN in New York, Omar Hilale, called for withdrawing the Sahara issue from the agenda of the fourth committee on grounds that it violates the UN charter and the mandate of the Security Council.

Listing the Sahara as a fourth committee issue is an aberration, he said, noting that the artificial dispute over the Sahara is dealt with within the framework of the Security council.

He recalled that Article 12 of the UN charter 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.”

Therefore, the Moroccan ambassador stressed that 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.

Indeed, maintaining the Sahara conflict on the agenda of the fourth committee 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. The Security Council has never considered the Sahara dispute as a decolonization issue.

In the same vein, 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 terms calling the Sahara issue a “regional conflict.”