Western Sahara: UN attempts to revive the dialogue

The dialogue on Western Sahara will resume this Wednesday, December 5. The talks will be held for two days at the UN Human Rights Building in Geneva. Western Sahara is located in southern Morocco, on the border with Mauritania and Algeria.

This is the novelty of these discussions. For the first time, the Polisario Front, Morocco, but also Algeria and Mauritania, were invited to sit around the table, with the same status. The idea is to break the cleavage between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which has lasted for more than forty years. The major point of tension is that of the status of Western Sahara.

Morocco is willing to grant autonomy within its territorial sovereignty, when the Polisario Front demands self-determination through the holding of a referendum, as explained by Mohamed Khaddad, member of the National Secretariat of the Polisario Front: "The question of Western Sahara is a question of decolonization. The passage of years has not changed this nature of the conflict. The people of Western Sahara have the right to decide their fate so we have already, in our 2007 solution, offered guarantees to Morocco on the economic, security and social level. In short, we can negotiate everything except the right to self-determination. Of course, the best option is to have an agreement and a referendum and go to the referendum hand in hand.