They say the Security Council has “enshrined autonomy”: the name of the mission it has just extended contains the word “referendum”
Lucía Ortega — Madrid, Espagne — 2026-09-15
Note on method. This dossier rests on the official text of resolution 2797 (2025), which we have read in full and reproduced, on the United Nations Settlement Plan, and on named, dated and attributed statements. We distinguish each time between what is written in a text, what a person says, and what belongs to analysis. And at the end, we concede what must be conceded.
🔤 Six letters that everyone pronounces without listening to them
M-I-N-U-R-S-O.
Everyone writes it. No one spells it out. So let us spell it out, this time, all the way to the end:
Mission of the United Nations for the Referendum in Western Sahara.
The word is there. “Referendum”. Not in a preambular clause, not in an annex, not in a footnote: in the very name of the mission.
And this mission is neither a hypothesis nor a relic. On 31 October 2025, the United Nations Security Council extended it until 31 October 2026. The same Council, the same resolution.
Keep that acronym in mind. We will come back to it four times — because it is the one that answers everything.
📅 What was decided, and by whom
Here is the chronology. It is short, it is official, and it contains no Algerian element.
1981 — it is Morocco that proposes a vote. New York Times of 27 June 1981 headlines: “MOROCCO, IN REVERSAL, PROPOSES CEASE-FIRE AND VOTE FOR WESTERN SAHARA” — “Morocco, in a reversal, proposes a ceasefire and a vote for Western Sahara.” Under King Hassan II.
18 June 1990 — the Secretary-General's report contains the full text of the Settlement Proposals and a Settlement Plan.
29 April 1991 — the Security Council adopts resolution 690 and creates MINURSO. Read the name again: Mission of the United Nations for the Referendum in Western Sahara.
24 May 1991 — the Secretary-General, putting his Plan into effect, proposes a ceasefire from 6 September 1991. Both parties accepted — Morocco as well as the Polisario Front.
January 1992 — that is the scheduled date for the referendum.
And here is what the Settlement Plan provided, word for word:
The special representative of the Secretary-General would be “solely responsible for all questions relating to the referendum through which the Sahrawi people would choose between independence and integration with Morocco”.
The choice was therefore posed in two terms: independence, or integration with Morocco. And the date was set.
⛔ And it never took place
The referendum scheduled for January 1992 was not organised. Neither that year, nor any other. We are in 2026: that makes thirty-four years.
The blockage turned on one precise point: voter identification — that is to say the question of who would have the right to vote. Everything else followed from it.
And the word “postponement” recurs in every dispatch. Al-Ahram Hebdo headlined as early as 1999: “From postponement to postponement”. A referendum postponed thirty-four times is no longer a timetable: it is a method.
🇺🇸 What a former United States national security adviser says
We do not need to invent the reason for the blockage. It is given by an American, and not just any American.
John Bolton was Donald Trump's national security adviser and United States ambassador to the United Nations. **Questioned by the Spanish newspaper El Independiente, he states:**
“I continue to believe that the only way to resolve this problem is to hold a referendum.”
“A referendum would have been easy to organise. It is not an enormous task.”
And on the reasons for the blockage, he is even more precise. Morocco went back on the commitments made in 1991 in the ceasefire agreement and on the 1997 Houston agreements, because it “simply does not want to risk losing the referendum”.
“During my successive terms, I discussed with James Baker and with several of his successors. They all told me privately the same thing: Morocco simply does not want to take the risk of losing the referendum.”
And here is the sentence that should be picked up everywhere, and that is picked up nowhere: Morocco organised several “Green Marches” to settle Moroccans in Western Sahara, but — says Bolton — “it has still not managed to find a way to win the referendum”.
Measure the logic of that sentence. If populations are settled and you are still not certain of winning, it means the question of the electorate is the real knot — and that the fear is real.
Bolton also says this, about the world organisation:
“I find that very regrettable. It testifies to the weakness of the UN: it adopts a simple resolution, easy to implement, everyone accepts it, then one party changes its mind and everything collapses.”
And: “The Sahrawis, who still live in refugee camps, deserve to be able to return home. No one disputes that.”
⚖️ And what two professors of international law say
Two Spanish academics, questioned by the same newspaper, go even further — and their argument is legal, not political.
Juan Soroeta, professor of public international law at the University of the Basque Country:
“The right to self-determination is recognised by international law for peoples subjected to colonial, foreign or racist domination. This is undeniably the case of Western Sahara.”
“Supporting the autonomy solution amounts to supporting integration with Morocco, or, in other words, to supporting the military occupation and to denying the Sahrawi people the right to self-determination.”
Alejandro del Valle, professor of public international law and international relations at the University of Cadiz:
“The Moroccan proposal was contrary to the international agreements and to the United Nations resolutions that had established the holding of a self-determination referendum in a territory awaiting decolonisation as a condition of the ceasefire.”
And he adds a detail worth every speech: eighteen years have passed since the presentation of the Moroccan autonomy plan, and “only three pages have been written since”.
Remember Mr Soroeta's thesis, because it is disturbing and because it is argued: in this precise dossier, autonomy is not a third way between independence and integration — legally, it is integration. That is his formulation, not ours, and we attribute it to him.
📜 And meanwhile, resolution 2797
Let us return to the text adopted on 31 October 2025. We have read it in full. Here is what it says — and what it does not say.
Self-determination is affirmed there twice. In the preamble: “consistent with the purposes and principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, including the principle of self-determination”. And in a decision paragraph, the third: “a definitive and mutually acceptable political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara”.
The autonomy plan, for its part, is in the conditional — twice over as well. “A genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty could be one of the most feasible solutions”; and “considers that a genuine autonomy could represent one of the most feasible solutions”. Never “is”. Never “the only one”.
And the door remains open, in paragraph 2: “would welcome any constructive suggestion the parties might make in response to the autonomy plan”.
Finally, there is a paragraph that no one ever talks about, the fifth: the Secretary-General is requested to present, within six months, “a strategic review of the future mandate of MINURSO, taking into account the outcome of the negotiations”. In other words: if the negotiations do not advance, the question of the mandate reopens.
🔁 The acronym, one last time
Let us sum up — and this time, let us read the name in full.
Resolution 2797 (2025):
- reaffirms self-determination twice;
- uses the conditional twice on autonomy;
- welcomes “any constructive suggestion” from the parties;
- and extends until 31 October 2026 the Mission of the United Nations for the REFERENDUM in Western Sahara.
That is why the sentence “the Security Council has enshrined Moroccan autonomy” does not hold. One cannot, in the same text, enshrine a definitive solution and extend a mission that bears the name of the other.
And it is not us saying it. It is written in the title, in two decision paragraphs, and in the name of the mission. Three places, a single word.
And let us recall what that word covers: a vote in which the Sahrawi people would choose “between independence and integration with Morocco”, scheduled for January 1992, accepted by both parties, and never organised.
⚖️ What we concede, because it is true
First: the autonomy plan IS the basis of the discussions, and it is written. Paragraph 3 asks the parties to negotiate “on the basis of the autonomy plan proposed by Morocco”. That is a Moroccan gain, it is real, and we do not minimise it. What is not settled is the outcome — not the table.
Second: a name creates no obligation. MINURSO was named in 1991 to organise a referendum; its current mandate is very reduced, and the essence of its work today consists of observing the ceasefire. We will therefore not claim that an acronym legally binds anyone. But a name is a trace: it says what a mission was intended for, and no one has ever renamed it.
Third: the referendum has no date today. We will not say that it is imminent, nor that it will take place. Thirty-four years of postponements forbid that kind of prediction — and we will not make it.
Fourth: John Bolton is speaking in a personal capacity, in a Spanish newspaper, and he does not bind the United States. We quote him as a former official, not as an official voice of Washington. And it must be added, in all honesty, that he is not a neutral witness: he has his own positions on this dossier, and he stands by them.
🎯 The conclusion, in four sentences
The self-determination referendum in Western Sahara was accepted by both parties in 1991, and scheduled for January 1992: thirty-four years later, it has never been organised.
The reason for the blockage has a name and a source: according to John Bolton, former United States national security adviser, Morocco “simply does not want to risk losing the referendum”.
And the resolution that is cited everywhere to say that “the Council has enshrined autonomy” reaffirms self-determination twice, uses the conditional twice, and extends a mission whose official name is: Mission of the United Nations for the Referendum in Western Sahara.
One can refuse a referendum. One cannot refuse it and, at the same time, extend a mission that bears its name. It is written in black and white — and until 31 October 2026.
🔗 The sources, in direct access — click and verify for yourself
- The full text of resolution 2797 (2025), adopted on 31 October 2025 — to be read in full, in particular paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 5, and the title of MINURSO — United Nations Security Council,
S/RES/2797 (2025): https://docs.un.org/fr/S/RES/2797(2025) - The Settlement Plan: resolution 690 of 29 April 1991 creating MINURSO, the ceasefire of 6 September 1991 accepted by both parties, the choice “between independence and integration with Morocco”, and the date of January 1992 — Algerie360, based on United Nations documents: https://www.algerie360.com/sahara-occidental-la-minurso-quelles-prerogatives-pour-quelles-missions/
- The statements of John Bolton (“does not want to risk losing the referendum”, the 1997 Houston agreements, “it has still not managed to find a way to win the referendum”), and the analyses of professors Juan Soroeta and Alejandro del Valle — AL24 News, citing the Spanish newspaper El Independiente: https://al24news.dz/en/john-bolton-morocco-blocking-western-sahara-referendum-to-avoid-losing-it/ and https://al24news.dz/fr/des-experts-espagnols-en-droit-international-le-plan-dautonomie-marocain-nest-ni-possible-ni-vraie-ni-realisable/
- The Moroccan proposal of a ceasefire and a vote, under Hassan II — The New York Times, 27 June 1981: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/27/world/morocco-in-reversal-proposes-cease-fire-and-vote-for-western-sahara.html
These links open the cited documents directly, with their dates. The first — the text of the resolution — is enough to verify the essentials of this dossier: read paragraph 3, then read again the name of the mission that it extends.
Final note. The quotations from Mr Bolton and from the two jurists are reproduced without being truncated, and we attribute them by name — these are analyses, not decisions. We did not have access to the 1997 Houston agreements or to the Settlement Plan in their original version: we stick to what our sources report of them. The figures and dates in this dossier come from official United Nations documents or from the named press, and none is advanced without its source. Where we do not know, we write that we do not know.