Morocco in 2025 and looking toward its Sahara in 2026

In 1975, Morocco—located in northwestern Africa—undertook the largest peaceful mobilization of its citizens toward Western Sahara, its Sahara, through the historic Green March, at the call of its king, Hassan II, once Spain, the occupying power of the southernmost portion of Moroccan territory, withdrew for good.

Since then, the kingdom has taken a resilient stance against the conspiracies of Algeria, its eastern neighbor, and the Polisario, a front that is unnatural and alien to the aspirations of the Sahrawi people, and subservient to the regime in Algiers, both obsessed with hiding the sun with a finger, seeking to prevent history, law, and politics from siding with Morocco's non-negotiable territorial integrity.

After half a century, the UN Security Council, with its powerful permanent members (China, the US, France, the UK, and Russia), adopted Resolution 2797(2025) on October 31, enshrining the principle of autonomy as the basis for resolving the Sahara issue.

The aforementioned resolution of the Council, which is the UN body that has a monopoly on the use of force in the world, took up the proposal of King Mohammed VI, presented to the UN in 2007, which was considered the most appropriate approach as it contained three virtues of imminent acceptance: it was serious, credible, and realistic.

Due to its progressive and overwhelming acceptance by states, which led them to recognize Morocco's sovereignty over the Sahara—consulates were opened in Dahlak and Laayoune, the so-called Southern Provinces of the kingdom—and supporting the aforementioned proposal for autonomy (Sahrawi administrative government with full sovereignty of Morocco)—was the result of the tireless and impeccable work of Moroccan diplomacy, always hand in hand with its monarch, which explains the successful drafting of Resolution 2797.

Morocco, then, as it closes 2025 without triumphalism, which is the same as after 50 years, knows very well that autonomy for the Sahara, as an enormous achievement within the framework of the UN—the political forum invested with the greatest universal legitimacy for state causes—is the most solid foundation laid for what it must build, together with the other actors concerned by Resolution 2797, mainly Algeria and the Polisario.

Therefore, what lies ahead for 2026 must be dominated by goodwill and good faith, which, as constituent parts of the principle of peaceful solutions, I would like to remind Algeria and the Polisario Front, which is of a jus cogens nature, that is, it is legally imperative that they adopt the attitude that the UN expects of them, and from a position of political realism, to tell them that this is the only thing that matters, at the risk of Algeria becoming increasingly isolated and vulnerable in the Maghreb, Africa, and the world, which have seen it constantly putting obstacles in the way, and even throwing stones, and lacking the intelligence to take advantage of interdependence due to its obsequious Atlantic geopolitical feverishness, and the Polisario, overshadowed by other actors with increasing legitimacy such as the Sahrawi Movement for Peace, or, worse still, on the road to its inexorable extinction.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Mackay. Former Foreign Minister of Peru and Internationalist

Article published in the Diario Expreso newspaper in Peru