A senior Moroccan delegation has arrived in Managua, Nicaragua, for the United Nations Committee of 24 (C24) regional seminar for the Caribbean, running from May 25 to 27. The delegation is led by Ambassador Omar Hilale, Morocco’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, and includes senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Vice-President of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS).
For the eighth consecutive year, two elected officials from Morocco’s southern provinces are participating in the seminar at the invitation of the C24 president — a precedent-breaking development that has transformed what was once an exclusively Polisario-facing platform into a forum where elected representatives of the Moroccan Sahara are present and heard.
Ghalla Bahiya and M’hamed Abba, representing respectively the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab Region and the Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra Region, attend as local elected officials whose presence in the C24 process dates back to 2019, breaking a pattern that had given the Polisario exclusive access for decades.
The Managua seminar takes place eight months after the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2797 in October 2025, which invited all four parties to engage in discussions without preconditions on the basis of the Moroccan autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty. The Moroccan delegation intends to use the forum to brief C24 members and other participants on the positive developments generated by that resolution and on the accelerating international momentum in support of the autonomy framework.
The delegation will present a detailed account of the New Development Model for the Southern Provinces, launched by King Mohammed VI in 2015 with a budget of more than ten billion dollars. The model’s achievements — spanning infrastructure, renewable energy, the blue economy, and desalination facilities — provide concrete evidence that the autonomy framework is not merely a political proposal but an active, well-resourced development programme producing tangible improvements in living conditions and economic opportunity for the population of the territory.
Morocco will also document before C24 members the current breadth of international support for its position: 130 countries backing the autonomy plan, representing more than two-thirds of UN member states, including permanent Security Council members, and a wave of recognition withdrawals from the Polisario’s self-proclaimed entity by Honduras, Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, and Mali in recent months.
The seminar, held under the theme “Renewed Commitments, Partnerships and Innovative Approaches,” is recording a participation significantly higher than in previous editions.
