The collapse of the mandate is likely to strengthen Morocco's position on the referendum question, though its autonomy proposal has already been adopted by the UN.
The mandate of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) expired on Saturday after Russia vetoed a US-drafted resolution that would have extended it, according to Al Jazeera. Eleven of the fifteen Security Council members backed the draft, including France and the United Kingdom, but the veto of a permanent member was enough to stop it. Morocco welcomed the outcome; Algeria expressed regret.
The substance of the US text mattered as much as its fate. According to the report, the draft would have extended the mission for a year, removed the word "referendum" from its name and made Morocco's autonomy proposal the only basis for further talks. The Security Council had already adopted a resolution last October offering genuine autonomy, under which the territory would manage its internal affairs while remaining under Moroccan sovereignty. Speaking after the vote, the US ambassador, Mike Waltz, said it was unfortunate that the veto had been used to preserve "the letter R" in the mission's name, and that Washington's proposal would have moved the fifty-year conflict forward.
Russia's ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Moscow opposed the draft because it favoured one side, arguing that the Security Council cannot automatically predetermine matters relating to sovereignty. Russia then proposed renewing the existing mission without the changes, but that text secured only two votes in favour, one against and eleven abstentions, falling short of the nine required. The Polisario Front's representative at the UN, Sidi Omar, welcomed the veto, saying the US proposal would have undermined Sahrawi self-determination.
Morocco's royal palace said UN personnel and equipment should leave the territory in the coming days and that the Western Sahara question should be withdrawn from the Security Council's consideration altogether, while insisting that Morocco remained committed to the ceasefire. Algeria's foreign ministry criticised what it called the US draft's excessive bias towards Morocco, and its UN delegate thanked Russia and the member states that had declined to associate themselves with the text. MINURSO, which was established in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and prepare a referendum that was never held, had 155 military personnel and was set to cost $62m in the fiscal year that began in June, according to a UN report.
The collapse of the mandate is likely to strengthen Morocco's position on the referendum question, though its autonomy proposal has already been adopted by the UN. A historian and researcher based in Morocco, Selim Balouati Lakhloufi, told Al Jazeera that support from the United States, France and the United Kingdom was shifting the debate away from self-determination and independence towards autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Aid organisations warn that the end of the mission could escalate the dispute. Low-level fighting has continued since the Polisario Front resumed armed struggle in 2020, and between 100,000 and 140,000 Moroccan military personnel are based in the territory, the last UN-designated non-self-governing territory in Africa.
What happens next is not yet known. The report gives no indication of whether a further attempt to renew the mission will be made, whether the Security Council will take up the issue again at Morocco's request, or how the ceasefire will be monitored without UN observers on the ground. The scale of any renewed fighting, and the response of the Sahrawi refugee population in Tindouf, cannot be assessed from the material available.
