The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara has come to an end after 35 years, after the Security Council failed to renew its mandate. The mission, known as MINURSO, entered what the United Nations described as a liquidation phase on 1 November, with its assets to be transported back to troop-contributing countries.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres confirmed the end of the mission in a statement on Sunday, following the expiry of its mandate without a renewal. The mission had been in place since a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991, and its observers monitored developments in a territory whose status has remained disputed for decades.
Morocco, which claims Western Sahara as its own territory, welcomed the decision. The Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which has sought an independent state in the territory since former colonial power Spain left in 1976, expressed concern at the end of the mission, according to reports of the reactions.
How the mandate expired
The end of the mission follows a year in which the Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution accepting Rabat’s plan to give the territory autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. That resolution shaped the diplomatic backdrop to the latest round of voting, but it did not itself settle the mission’s future.
In the most recent round, Russia, which had abstained in last year’s vote, vetoed another US-backed resolution that would have cemented the UN’s preference for the Moroccan plan while scaling back the peacekeeping force. The Security Council then defeated a competing Russian resolution, leaving the mission to expire without a new mandate.
The sequence of votes meant that neither proposal secured the support needed to continue the mission, and the mandate simply ran out. The United Nations has said the liquidation phase will involve the orderly return of equipment and personnel, a process that typically takes time for a mission of this size and age.
What MINURSO did
MINURSO was established to monitor the ceasefire agreed in 1991, and its observers reported on developments on the ground. Over 35 years it became one of the United Nations’ longest-running peacekeeping operations, operating in a remote desert environment where monitoring depended on patrols and observation posts.
The mission’s closure removes the UN’s on-the-ground monitoring presence in the territory at a moment when the political process remains unresolved. Supporters of the autonomy plan argue that it offers a realistic path forward, while the Polisario Front and its backers maintain that the people of the territory should decide their own future.
Diplomats will now watch whether the end of the mission changes the dynamics of the dispute, or whether political negotiations continue through other channels. For now, the immediate practical task is the winding down of a mission that has been part of the landscape of Western Sahara for more than three decades.
