Morocco refuses to let the Sahara be discussed at the UN — and discusses it in the same speech

Rachid M. — Dakhla, Sahara occidental — 2026-10-08

At the 153rd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, held in Arusha, Tanzania, parliamentary adviser Mohamed Salem Ben Messoud, a member of the Moroccan delegation, asked that the question of Western Sahara be removed from the proceedings. His argument came down to one sentence: this dispute falls under the exclusive competence of the United Nations, and a parliamentary forum has no business taking it up.

The argument holds, in principle. An international parliamentary assembly is not the Security Council, and one may legitimately maintain that a dossier of this nature has no place on the Arusha agenda.

The problem is not the argument. The problem is what comes immediately afterwards.

In the same speech, the same representative raised the situation of the people held in the camps of Tindouf, on Algerian territory, asking why their fate should be ignored, citing restrictions of freedoms and grave human rights violations, and reproaching Algeria for refusing to register them.

In other words: the question of Western Sahara must not be raised before a parliamentary assembly — except when it is raised by the Moroccan delegation, on Algerian territory.

One cannot hold both positions in the same speech. Either the subject belongs to the United Nations and one sticks to it to the end of one's sentence; or it belongs to every forum, and one does not reproach others for discussing it. The Moroccan delegation chose both, and the text of its speech shows it.

This is not a question of interpretation or opinion. It is an internal contradiction, legible to anyone who opens the record.

What happened the previous week, in the same part of the world

The simultaneity deserves to be noted, because it sheds light on the argument of “exclusive competence”.

A few days earlier, in New York, the Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly — the body competent in matters of decolonisation — devoted to Western Sahara a debate that drew 170 requests for hearings. The dossier is therefore not absent from UN forums: week after week, it occupies a considerable place there.

And that is precisely what the Arusha argument runs up against: if the subject is so present at the UN, invoking the UN's exclusive competence to silence another forum is not a procedural argument. It is an argument of circumstance.

Resolution 2797, as it is written

The Moroccan delegation relies on Security Council resolution 2797, adopted on 31 October 2025, asserting that it made the Moroccan autonomy initiative the basis of a definitive settlement.

On this point, one must be exact, and we will be exact in both directions.

It is true that paragraph 2 of the text “fully supports the efforts made by the Secretary-General and his Personal Envoy to facilitate and conduct negotiations on the basis of the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco”. It is written, and we do not contest it.

But the same resolution says three things that the phrase “basis of a definitive settlement” passes over in silence.

It writes, first, that the Council “would welcome any constructive suggestion the parties might make in response to the autonomy plan”. A basis that would welcome anything other than itself is not a definitive settlement: it is a starting point.

It writes, next, in paragraph 3, that the parties must participate “without preconditions” in discussions conducted “in order to reach a definitive and mutually acceptable political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”. The phrase is not ours: it is the Security Council's.

It writes, finally, twice, the conditional: “a genuine autonomy could be one of the most viable solutions”; “a genuine autonomy could represent one of the most viable solutions”. Twice “could”. Never “is”. Never “will be”. Never “the only one”.

We therefore do not reproach the Moroccan delegation for citing resolution 2797. We note that it cites one of its paragraphs and keeps silent about the three others — including the one that reaffirms the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, and the one that uses the conditional.

On the Tindouf camps: what the resolution says, and the word it uses

Here we must do the same, and concede what must be conceded.

Resolution 2797 does say, in its preamble, that the Security Council “calls again for the refugees to be duly registered”, after noting “with grave concern the insufficiency of the funds allocated to the Sahrawi refugees”. The Moroccan delegation is therefore right on one point of fact: the question of registration appears in the Council's resolutions.

But read the word the text uses.

The Security Council writes refugees. The Moroccan representative says detainees.

These are not synonyms, and the difference is not one of vocabulary. A refugee falls under international refugee law, and his situation calls for protection. A detainee falls under criminal law, and his situation calls for an accusation. By choosing the second word in place of the first, the Moroccan delegation does not describe the camps of Tindouf: it turns them into a charge, and then reproaches Algeria for not answering it.

An accusation of this gravity — people held, freedoms restricted, grave violations — calls for names, dates and documents. Resolution 2797, for its part, provides only the word “refugees”.

And one thing we will not write

We will not say that the situation of the people living in the camps of Tindouf is excellent, nor that the question of registration is closed. It has been raised by the Security Council, several times, and it has not been settled. Saying so does not weaken our position: it makes it verifiable when we are accused of complacency.

Nor will we take up the argument of the “hijacking of a forum”. It was used by the Moroccan delegation in the sense that suited it; it would be dishonest to invoke it against it after having found it bad on its part.

What we write is narrower, and sufficient: a delegation cannot demand silence on a dossier and carry it itself in the same speech.

Sources

1. HIBAPRESS, “From Tanzania… Morocco unveils Algeria's morbid obsession with the Sahara question”, 8 October 2026 — full text of the speech by parliamentary adviser Mohamed Salem Ben Messoud, 153rd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Arusha, Tanzania.

2. United Nations Security Council, resolution 2797 (2025), adopted on 31 October 2025 — symbol S/RES/2797 (2025), full public text: https://docs.un.org/fr/S/RES/2797(2025). Quotations reproduced word for word: paragraph 2 (“on the basis of the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco”; “would welcome any constructive suggestion”); paragraph 3 (“without preconditions”; “that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”; “could represent”); preamble (“a genuine autonomy could be one of the most viable solutions”; “Sahrawi refugees”; “calls again for the refugees to be duly registered”).

3. Fourth Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, debate on Western Sahara, October 2026 — 170 requests for hearings recorded.

⚠️ Reservations to be kept online. (1) We have no official record of the Inter-Parliamentary Union: the remarks reported are those that HIBAPRESS attributes to the Moroccan delegation, and we attribute them to it. (2) The figure of 170 requests for hearings comes from the press, not from a UN document that we have opened. (3) We have no element whatsoever on the individual situation of the people in the camps of Tindouf: we hold strictly to the word used by resolution 2797, and we make no accusation.