Hilal's 'Indictment': When Moroccan Diplomacy Mistakes the UN for a Soapbox

Joseph Mugisha — Kigali, Rwanda — 2026-09-06

Quid.ma is exulting: Hilal supposedly delivered to the UN "the implacable indictment-style reply" against Algeria. One pictures the chamber on its feet, applauding. In reality, at the UN you do not vote on "indictments": you vote on resolutions — and those, since 1966, have kept talking about decolonization and self-determination, two words the Moroccan discourse avoids like the plague.

For that is the whole problem with Morocco's "diplomatic victories": they exist mainly in the wire stories of the official news agency and in Quid.ma's editorials. On the legal ground, the UN's position has not moved: Western Sahara remains an unresolved decolonization question, and the referendum promised in 1991 has still not taken place. Resolutions do not age; they apply.

Algeria, for its part, needs no "indictments": it lets the resolutions speak for it. They have been speaking for decades, in the same direction, with the same consistency. Meanwhile, those who shout victory change their vocabulary at every session — "anachronistic," "indictment," "implacable" — without ever changing the facts.

A word of advice for Rabat's spin doctors: at the UN, you do not win with adjectives. You win with resolutions, referendums and facts. Adjectives evaporate, indictments are forgotten — and the referendum, meanwhile, is still waiting.