What AMU is and how it works

The word, and who else it belongs to

Britannica glosses Maghreb as the Arabic for the West, gives Maghrib as the alternative spelling, and files it as the Africa Minor of the ancients. It dates the naming to the Arab conquest of the late seventh century, after which the broader area of North Africa came to be known by that word.

The same word is one member's name for itself. Britannica gives Morocco's Arabic name as Al-Maghrib, glossed as the place where the sun sets, and Al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah as the formal style of the kingdom. Morocco's record in this catalogue carries the Arabic name in exactly that form. A group named for a compass direction has no edge written into its name, and that is where most of the argument about this one sits.

Zeralda, then Marrakesh

The heads of state met at Zeralda in Algeria on 10 June 1988 and set up a commission to work out how a union might be made. Its findings became the union's short and medium term programme of work. The Treaty instituting the Arab Maghreb Union was signed at Marrakesh on 17 February 1989, and the summit adopted a solemn declaration and the work programme alongside it. WIPO Lex records the treaty as adopted at Marrakesh on that date, entering into force on 1 July 1989, with texts on file in Arabic, English and French.

The Economic Commission for Africa lists what the treaty set up: a Presidency Council, a Consultative Council, a Secretariat, a Monitoring Committee, a meeting of prime ministers, a council of foreign ministers, specialised ministerial commissions, a Judicial Organ, a University of the Maghreb, and a Maghreb Bank for Investment and Foreign Trade. Among the stated objects is working gradually towards free movement of persons and the transfer of services, goods and capital between the members. The headquarters is at Rabat.

The summits, and where the list ends

The secretariat's own history sets out the meetings of the Presidency Council in order: Tunis on 21 to 23 January 1990, Algiers on 21 to 23 July 1990, Ras Lanouf in Libya on 10 and 11 March 1991, Casablanca on 15 and 16 September 1991, Nouakchott on 10 and 11 November 1992, and Tunis again on 2 and 3 April 1994. The published list ends there. Across those meetings, on the secretariat's own count, the council adopted 36 Maghreb conventions across various sectors.

Nothing has been wound up. The Economic Commission for Africa still counts the union among the eight regional economic communities recognised as building blocks of the African Union, beside CEN-SAD, COMESA, the East African Community, ECCAS, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC. The members carry other memberships too: two of them record COMESA on their own pages here, and the records date every member's accession to the Arab League long before the union existed, from Libya on 28 March 1953 through Morocco and Tunisia on 1 October 1958 and Algeria on 16 August 1962 to Mauritania on 26 November 1973.

Where the edges are argued

Three bodies that publish their own definitions draw this region three ways, and the disagreement is about one member.

Britannica's article takes the Maghreb as the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plain of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, and does not reach Mauritania. M49, the statistical standard of the UN Statistics Division, files Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia in Northern Africa together with Egypt, Sudan and Western Sahara, and files Mauritania in Western Africa; M49 states that its groupings are a statistical convenience implying nothing about political affiliation. This catalogue follows that line, so Mauritania's record gives its subregion as West Africa while the other members give the Maghreb. The Economic Commission for Africa draws it a third way again: its Subregional Office for North Africa sits at Rabat, in the same city as the union's secretariat, and the countries attending its intergovernmental committee of experts are Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia.

Membership of the treaty settles none of that. Mauritania signed at Marrakesh with the others, which fixes the group without fixing the region.

The territory in the middle

Western Sahara is filed in this catalogue under the Maghreb, with its status recorded as disputed and no seat at the United Nations. M49 files it in Northern Africa. Its land neighbours are Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, all members of the union, and it is not a member itself.

The United Nations account is on the record. Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO accepted settlement proposals on 30 August 1988. The Security Council established the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara by resolution 690 of 29 April 1991. The referendum was to be held in January 1992 and has never been held. Identification of voters began in August 1994, was suspended in May 1996, and the Identification Commission completed its work in 2004. When talks resumed in 2007 the parties were Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO, with Algeria and Mauritania present as neighbouring countries. This catalogue records the dispute and takes no position in it.

What the records share

Algeria's record lists a land border with every other member. Tunisia's lists two, and both are members.

Every member's record puts its lowest point below sea level, and in every case that point is a salt flat: Sebkha Tah at 55 metres below in Morocco, Sabkhat Ghuzayyil at 47 below in Libya, Chott Melrhir at 35 below in Algeria, Shatt al Gharsah at 17 below in Tunisia, and Sebkha de Ndrhamcha at 5 below in Mauritania. Each of those figures is a measurement taken against sea level, which is what makes it negative. The high ground is not held in common in the same way: the summits the records name are Jbel Toubkal in Morocco at 4,167 metres, Mount Tahat in Algeria at 2,908, Bikku Bitti in Libya at 2,267, Jebel ech Chambi in Tunisia at 1,544 and Kediet ej Jill in Mauritania at 915.

Arabic appears as an official language on every member's record. Algeria and Morocco each carry a second one in standardised form, Standard Algerian Berber and Standard Moroccan Tamazight.