Western Sahara's politics: two administrations under the same five names

Who claims Western Sahara and on what grounds

Morocco claims Western Sahara as part of the kingdom, a claim Britannica dates to the years after Morocco's own independence in 1956. In his speech on the anniversary of the Green March in November 2021, Morocco's king said that the country "is not negotiating over its Sahara". At the United Nations decolonization committee on 16 June 2026, Morocco's delegate called the question "the exclusive competence of the Security Council" and the committee's handling of it "sterile".

The Polisario Front, constituted on 10 May 1973, claims the whole territory for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which it proclaimed at Bir Lehlou on 27 February 1976, and its representative told the same session that there was "an overwhelming consensus among Sahrawis in favour of independence". The Front cites the advisory opinion the International Court of Justice gave on 16 October 1975, which found legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some of the territory's tribes but concluded that the materials before it "do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty". The history article follows the opinion into the war that came after it.

Each side set its terms down for the UN Secretary-General in April 2007. The Front's proposal, which the Security Council's resolutions date to 10 April, asked for a referendum offering independence, merger with Morocco or autonomy. Morocco's, presented on 11 April, would give the territory's population administrative, legislative and judicial powers under Moroccan sovereignty, with Morocco keeping defence, external relations and "the constitutional and religious prerogatives of His Majesty the King".

The United Nations has listed Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since 1963. Spain told it on 26 February 1976 that it had ended its presence and relinquished its responsibilities, which, by the account in the SADR article on Wikipedia, left the territory with no administering power. Mauritania gave up its own claim in a peace treaty with the Front on 5 August 1979 and has recognised the SADR since 1984. Algeria hosts the Front and backs it, and calls itself an observer to the process; Morocco has accused the SADR of being a puppet state through which Algeria fights a proxy war.

How Morocco governs the territory it holds

Morocco treats the parts of Western Sahara it holds as provinces of the kingdom, under a constitutional monarchy in which, as the Western Sahara article on Wikipedia puts it, the monarch can appoint the government and dissolve parliament. Three Moroccan regions lie within or partly within the territory: Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra, with the provinces of Boujdour, Es-Semara, Laâyoune and Tarfaya; Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab, with Aousserd and Oued Eddahab; and Guelmim-Oued Noun, through the province of Assa-Zag. Morocco's census office, the HCP, counted a legal population of 451,028 in Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra and 219,965 in Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab on 1 September 2024. The census counts Moroccan regions and gives no figure for Western Sahara as a territory.

Residents vote in Morocco's national and regional elections. Freedom House, in its report on 2024, counts 13 representatives elected from the territory to the lower house in Rabat and reports chronically low turnout; the Western Sahara article on Wikipedia records that international observers judged the last elections to that house reasonably free and fair. After the elections of September 2021 Morocco called the reported high participation a "new confirmation, through the ballot box, of the unwavering commitment of citizens of the southern provinces to their Moroccanness". The Polisario Front said the same elections "cannot have any effect on the legal status of Western Sahara".

The law limits what a candidate may stand for. Freedom House reports that anyone who challenges Moroccan control of the territory is barred from running, that the Polisario Front is banned in the areas Morocco holds and that pro-independence parties are not allowed to form. Morocco's Press Code of 2016 prohibits challenges to the kingdom's "territorial integrity", and journalists accused of such a challenge could face prison sentences of six months to two years.

Morocco offers its own institutions as the case for its plan. The Congressional Research Service reported in October 2014 that Morocco cited its investment, its stated commitment to governance reforms and the Sahrawis serving in official positions as proof that autonomy was the best prospect for self-determination, and that the king tied the decentralisation in the constitution adopted by referendum in July 2011 to a settlement. At the decolonization committee in June 2026 a member of the Regional Council of Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab called Resolution 2797 a "landmark resolution".

What the Sahrawi Republic runs from Rabouni

Which institutions the Sahrawi constitution creates

The SADR is officially a one-party semi-presidential republic. Since August 1982 its highest office has been the presidency, held by the secretary-general of the Polisario Front, who appoints the prime minister and the judges. Its parliament, the Sahrawi National Council, has 53 members, all from the Front, according to the SADR article on Wikipedia, and 51 according to Freedom House's report on 2024, which says the Front's General Popular Congress elects it indirectly and that most of the voting happens in the camps in Algeria. Set up as a consultative body, the council has since written a ban on the death penalty into the constitution, and in 1999 it brought down a government with a vote of no confidence.

Britannica dates the Front's "new, more democratic constitution" to 1991; the SADR article describes a constitution of 1999 with some paragraphs suspended until "full independence". Until then the head of state is the Front's secretary-general, and on independence the Front is to be dismantled or separated from the state, which would move to multi-party democracy and a market economy.

The Front's bodies are fused with the state's, in the SADR article's word. Its General Popular Congress, convened every four years and made up of delegates from the camps' popular congresses, the women's, youth and workers' organisations and the army, elects the secretary-general. Between congresses the National Secretariat decides; the one elected at the 11th congress, held at Tifariti in 2003, had 41 members, twelve of them secret delegates from the areas Morocco controls. Freedom House reports that the Front allows no other party to compete and has imprisoned opponents.

How the camps near Tindouf are governed

The camps were set up in Algeria's Tindouf Province in 1975 and 1976. Their five districts, the wilayat, are named after El Aaiun, Awserd, Smara, Dakhla and Bojador, and the SADR's government in exile works from an administrative camp called Rabouni. Each district divides into daïras and then into neighbourhoods that elect their own officials; local committees hand out food and water, and the daïra authorities run the schools and medical services. Residents are subject to the SADR's constitution and laws, in courts and prisons run by the Front, with qadis hearing family cases. Algeria does not intervene in how the camps are organised and holds that responsibility for human rights in them lies with the Front. Freedom House notes that many women lead the independence movement and organise the camps.

The land the Front holds east of the berm is what the SADR calls the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone, and the Western Sahara article on Wikipedia, revised on 15 October 2026, estimates its population at about 30,000 nomads. The SADR has kept its temporary capital there, at Bir Lehlou until 2008 and at Tifariti since 27 February 2008, and holds congresses and council sessions in the zone for what the same article calls the political and symbolic importance of meeting on Sahrawi territory. The capital it claims is Laayoune, which Morocco administers.

How many people each administration counts

The Congressional Research Service called the number of Sahrawis "disputed and politically fraught" in October 2014, and every figure in circulation belongs to whoever published it. The UN decolonization committee used a population of 612,000 for the territory at its session of June 2026. Who belongs to the people of Western Sahara is part of the dispute: Freedom House's report on 2024 says that by many accounts Moroccans now outnumber Sahrawis, the MINURSO article on Wikipedia cites an estimate that Moroccan settlers made up at least two-thirds of 500,000 inhabitants by 2015, and the Court of Justice of the European Union found on 4 October 2024 that most of the territory's current inhabitants do not belong to that people.

The camp population is an estimate, and each estimate has an author. Algerian authorities put the number of Sahrawi refugees at 165,000, a figure UNHCR cited for many years until 2005, when concern that it was inflated led UNHCR to lower its working figure to 90,000 on the evidence of satellite imagery. Oxfam put the population of the five camps at 173,000 in May 2020, the figure the House of Commons Library repeated in June 2025. The camps article on Wikipedia, revised in September 2026, gives Morocco's figure as 45,000 to 50,000 and a CIA estimate of about 100,000. MINURSO identified 42,378 voting-age adults in the camps in 1998, counting only those who proved descent from pre-1975 Western Sahara. The Congressional Research Service reported in October 2014 that Algeria had not permitted UNHCR to take a census.

The share of the territory each side holds varies by source in the same way.

Why both claimants sit in the African Union

The Organisation of African Unity, the AU's predecessor, became active in seeking a settlement in 1979, and the UN Secretary-General worked with it on the settlement proposals that Morocco and the Front accepted on 30 August 1988. The OAU also admitted the SADR, a membership the SADR article on Wikipedia dates to 1982 and the article on the politics of Western Sahara to a seating in 1984. Morocco left the OAU in protest in 1984. The SADR was a founding member of the African Union, and from South Africa's admission in 1994 until it was readmitted on 30 January 2017, Morocco was the only African member of the United Nations outside the organisation.

Since 2017 both claimants have sat in the same assembly. Crisis Group reported in March 2021 that Morocco had vowed on its entry to work to expel the SADR, and had used its new ties to lobby African governments to drop their recognition of it.

Outside the AU the two sit apart. The SADR belongs to neither the Arab League nor the Arab Maghreb Union, both of which count Morocco as a full member, and it takes part as a guest in meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement and the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership over Moroccan objections. The Congressional Research Service counted the dispute in 2014 among the reasons the Arab Maghreb Union, founded in 1989, was largely inactive.

Who recognises each claim

How many states recognise the Sahrawi Republic

The count depends on who keeps it and when. The SADR article on Wikipedia, revised on 1 October 2026, says 34 UN member states and South Ossetia recognise the SADR and that it has diplomatic relations with 45 UN states; its section on recognition counted 85 states that had recognised it at one time or another by September 2022, 39 of which had since frozen or withdrawn that recognition. Britannica, updated on 18 September 2026, gives "more than 40 countries", and the Polisario Front article, revised on 9 October 2026, counts 38 countries that recognise the legitimacy of the Polisario over Western Sahara.

Which states have backed Morocco's position

On 10 December 2020 the United States proclaimed that it "recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the entire Western Sahara territory", a step tied to Morocco's agreement to normalise relations with Israel, and the Secretary of State reaffirmed it on 8 April 2025. Israel recognised Moroccan sovereignty in July 2023. Britannica counts these two as the only formal recognitions. France's president told Morocco's parliament in October 2024 that "for France, this territory's present and future fall under Morocco's sovereignty", and Algeria withdrew its ambassador from Paris in response.

Other governments have endorsed the autonomy proposal and left sovereignty aside. Spain called it "the most serious, realistic and credible" basis for a solution in 2022, and Algeria suspended its friendship treaty of 2002 with Spain the same year. The United Kingdom adopted it as "the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis" on 1 June 2025, and ten days later its minister for the Middle East and North Africa said the United Kingdom regards the status of Western Sahara as "undetermined". Kenya, which recognised the SADR in 2005, endorsed the plan in May 2025. Morocco's government counted 116 supporting countries on 21 April 2025, "over 60% of UN member States", and Côte d'Ivoire's delegate put the number at around 130 in June 2026.

Support for Morocco has also taken the form of consulates. Côte d'Ivoire opened an honorary consulate in Laayoune in June 2019 and the Comoros the first foreign consulate-general in the territory that December; the Gambia and Guinea followed in Dakhla in January 2020, and on 4 November 2020 the United Arab Emirates became the first Arab state to open one. Crisis Group reported that Rabat saw the consulates as confirming its claim, and the Front's secretary-general called them a "breach of the international legal status of Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing Territory". The Western Sahara article on Wikipedia records a temporary United States consulate post in Dakhla from January 2021; the House of Commons Library, citing the State Department, recorded no progress on the promised consulate in June 2025.

What the Security Council asked of the parties

MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, was established by Resolution 690 on 29 April 1991 to prepare a referendum due in January 1992 and to monitor a ceasefire, which generally held from September 1991 until November 2020, when the Polisario Front withdrew from it. The referendum has never been held. The mission keeps team sites at Mahbes, Smara, Umm Dreiga and Auserd west of the berm and at Bir Lehlou, Tifariti, Mehaires, Mijek and Agwanit east of it, with a liaison office in Tindouf for the Front's leadership, and it describes itself as "the only impartial observer deployed across the Territory".

The Council renews the mandate a year at a time. Resolution 2756 of 31 October 2024, like Resolution 2703 a year earlier, took note of both proposals of April 2007. Resolution 2797, drafted by the United States and adopted on 31 October 2025 by 11 votes to none, with China, Pakistan and Russia abstaining and Algeria not taking part, extended the mission to 31 October 2026 and named one of the two as the starting point. It supports negotiations "taking as basis Morocco's Autonomy Proposal", states that "genuine autonomy could represent a most feasible outcome" and calls for "a final and mutually acceptable political solution that provides for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara". It also asked the Secretary-General for a strategic review of the mission within six months.

Council members read the text differently at the vote. France's delegate said that autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty "is the framework within which this issue must be resolved", and Denmark's that her country's vote "does not constitute a recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara". Algeria's delegate said the text did not sufficiently reflect UN doctrine on decolonization, and Russia's called it an "unbalanced text". At the decolonization committee in June 2026 Morocco's delegate said the resolution had "reaffirmed the abandonment of the referendum", and Namibia's that it "did not impose the Moroccan autonomy plan". The General Assembly's annual resolution of 2025 backed negotiations towards a solution providing for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.

How European courts treat the Polisario Front

The European Union's courts have heard the Polisario Front on behalf of the people of Western Sahara in cases over Morocco's trade agreements. On 21 December 2016 the Court of Justice ruled that the EU's agreements with Morocco did not apply to Western Sahara, given "the separate and distinct status guaranteed to the territory of Western Sahara under the Charter of the United Nations", and so dismissed the Front's action for lack of standing.

Agreements written to cover the territory followed in 2019: one on agricultural products in January and a fisheries partnership adopted on 4 March, whose four-year protocol carried an overall contribution of €208 million, part of it for the fisheries sector of Western Sahara. The Front challenged both. The General Court annulled the Council's decisions on 29 September 2021, and on 4 October 2024 the Court of Justice dismissed the appeals of the Commission and the Council.

That judgment calls the Front "a privileged interlocutor in the process conducted under the auspices of the United Nations". The Commission and the European External Action Service had consulted the territory's current inhabitants, most of whom, the court found, do not belong to the people of Western Sahara, a large part of which has been in exile in Algeria since the 1970s. Consent could be presumed only where an agreement gave that people "a specific, tangible, substantial and verifiable benefit", and these gave none. In a separate judgment the same day the court ruled that melons and tomatoes from the territory must be labelled with Western Sahara alone as their country of origin, with no reference to Morocco.