When discussing the legal status of the Western Sahara dispute, there is a key point that must always be emphasized: legally speaking, the issue has gone through three phases.

First phase

The first phase spanned the period between 1957 and 1965. The most critical development in this phase came in 1963, when Mauritania began competing with Morocco in claiming the Sahara. Yet, the prevailing concern within the UN General Assembly back then essentially had to do with the existence of a bilateral dispute between Morocco and Spain over sovereignty over the disputed region. This, as I show in my book, “The Self-Determination Delusion: How Activist Scholars and Journalists Have Hijacked the Western Sahara Case,” is confirmed by the official UN records and the statements made by various member states during that period, all of which called on Spain to end its occupation of of the Sahara and negotiate with Morocco the final status of the territory.

In addition, statements issued by the Chair of the Decolonization Committee until 1965 clearly show the solid conviction within the United Nations that it regarded this territorial dispute as a bilateral dispute between Morocco and Spain. This is indeed what was confirmed by Resolution 2072, through which the General Assembly called on Spain to negotiate with Morocco the ongoing dispute between the two countries over sovereignty in both Sidi Ifni – a coastal Moroccan town that was formerly Spanish territory – and the Sahara.

Second phase

The second phase lasted from 1966 to 2002. It is during this period that Morocco urged the General Assembly to pressure Spain to allow the populations of the Sahara to exercise their right to self-determination through a referendum under UN supervision.