Ibrahim Belali Aswih, a member of the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs, presented an in-depth reading of the international community’s approach to the Moroccan Sahara issue in light of Resolution 2797, which he described as “a pivotal moment in the history of this regional conflict.” He believes that this resolution constituted “the culmination of a long process of Moroccan diplomatic efforts, and a consolidation of the legitimacy of the autonomy initiative under Moroccan sovereignty as the realistic and practical solution that enjoys increasing support from the international community.”
In an article obtained by Hespress entitled “The Effectiveness of the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative: The Stakes of International Support and UN Fairness,” Aswih highlighted that the Moroccan initiative is not merely an administrative or managerial concept, but a comprehensive national project that responds to modern democratic standards and accommodates regional and international geopolitical changes, thus reinforcing a “win-win” approach to conflict management. He explained that “Morocco’s rejection of previous proposals that reintroduced the referendum option stemmed from its belief in their unrealistic and impossible nature in light of the new international context, a fact later acknowledged by UN officials themselves.”
The political analyst interested in the conflict noted that the concept of “self-determination” no longer means secession, but rather democratic participation within the mother country; this is embodied in the spirit and content of the Moroccan autonomy initiative, pointing out that this project has given the southern provinces a pivotal role in promoting regional stability and attracting investment, making them a strategic gateway to Africa and the Sahel, and evidence of the success of royal diplomacy in turning the challenge into an opportunity for development and unity, within an open and renewed national vision.
Article text:
The UN settlement process for the fabricated regional conflict over the Moroccan Sahara has reached a pivotal point in the Security Council’s approach to the nature of the desired political solution, moving towards full support for the Moroccan initiative as a realistic and viable solution, through the issuance of its latest resolution No. 2797.
The explicit and implicit resolution through the preamble and wording of this historic decision on Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara was what was behind His Majesty the King’s exceptional speech shortly after its issuance, which reflected a diplomatic and ethical perspective in managing regional disputes, and even a strategic vision that relied on the sincerity of friendships and the effectiveness of partnerships, which allows for the transformation of this conflict into a partnership. Indeed, the nature of this conflict and the real roots of its creation can be accommodated by this collective project that His Majesty the King spoke about in this speech by detailing and updating the Moroccan autonomy initiative as a solution that saves face for everyone, which the King of the country expressed as “no victor and no vanquished.”
Understanding the Moroccan autonomy project is not limited to the level of defining and implementing a management system under which powers or competencies are distributed between the center and the region. This is the option of decentralization adopted by Morocco in the process of democratic reform and achieving balance and territorial justice, which was approved by the 2011 Constitution on the basis of an actual introduction to the implementation of possible autonomy in the Sahara regions. Rather, the Moroccan initiative implicitly responds to geopolitical aspirations with a win-win logic that imposed itself with the winds of regional and global change as a consensual framework for a possible settlement. This was not possible previously with the UN settlement plan, whose procedural nature did not allow for the reshaping of international balances, because that would not have a significant impact on managing the file internationally at that stage, especially after the Houston agreements in 1997.
The draft Moroccan autonomy plan was, in essence, more profound and enriching than the framework agreement that UN mediator James Baker had proposed to the parties since 2001.
Perhaps Morocco’s rejection of this plan in its second version in 2003 was due to its reintroduction of the referendum after the Security Council itself had acknowledged the impossibility of organizing it according to the agreed standards. Thus, it does not represent progress towards a solution but rather a return to the failure of the previous path, not to mention that it empties autonomy of its content, as it makes it merely a temporary stage towards possible separation.
Security Council Resolution 1754 of 2007 praised the Moroccan autonomy initiative as credible and realistic, once it was presented by Morocco in April of the same year. It consists of three main sections and 35 paragraphs.
The first section was dedicated to reiterating the Kingdom's commitment to working towards a political and final solution to this fabricated regional conflict. It also touched upon the broader context, both internally, where Morocco is striving to build a modern, democratic society that guarantees all Sahrawis, whether residing within the country or returning, their rightful place in all institutions and bodies of the Sahara region; and internationally, through this initiative, Morocco seeks to fulfill the request of the UN Security Council, which, since the tenure of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2004, has consistently called upon the parties to intensify their cooperation with the UN plan to overcome the stalemate in the Sahara issue and to advance towards a political solution.
The second section of this proposal outlines the main pillars of this initiative, which draws its foundations from the principles of the United Nations and the provisions of advanced constitutions of countries geographically and culturally close to Morocco. This section also addresses the relationship between the central government and the regions, as well as the bodies of self-governance and their distribution. The third section then discusses the consensus-building process and the stages of implementing this project.
A year after this initiative was launched, in April 2008, the then Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General, Peter van Walsum, stated before the UN Security Council that the separation of the southern provinces from the Kingdom was not a realistic option, encouraging the parties involved to pursue a negotiated solution that fell short of full independence. Furthermore, in May of the same year, Erik Jensen, the Special Representative and Head of MINURSO, expressed his full support for the UN mediator.
At the time, it was difficult to believe that a series of positions supporting the Moroccan position would occur within the corridors of the United Nations, which in the balance of international politics today is considered a strong indication of a resounding shift in the international consensus in favor of the Moroccan proposal.
Morocco, which remained ready to work with the United Nations within a framework of responsibility and commitment, aiming to capitalize on the new, genuine, and positive momentum generated by the Moroccan initiative—an initiative that opens better prospects for finding a political, final, and mutually acceptable solution to this regional conflict within the UN framework—was allowed by the official rounds of negotiations in Manhasset in June and August, following the Security Council resolution on the Sahara, immediately after Rabat presented its initiative in April 2007, to conclude that this negotiating track within the political process launched by the Security Council would not be governed by the same previous parameters. This had led the Moroccan diplomatic decision-making circle, under the direct supervision of the King, to proceed cautiously and adopt a new strategy based on the effectiveness of international relations, which depend on the ability of international actors to influence international behavior. When the conditions for this forward-looking and proactive royal diplomacy matured, the international community seemed more inclined to adhere to a political solution and gradually abandon the settlement plan. Thus, Morocco moved towards achieving reconciliation without resorting to force or confrontation. This participatory and coalition-based approach to achieving national objectives is what prompted the change and reshaping of the The balance of power and international discourse favor the Moroccan autonomy initiative.
The fruit of the efforts and accumulations of this forward-looking vision was brought about by the content of the recent Security Council resolution 2797, which established a fundamental development in the concept of “self-determination.” This concept is no longer synonymous with secession, as has been repeatedly stated in the political literature of international relations. Rather, this new resolution has provided a new understanding that leans towards the right to democratic participation within the mother state. In this sense, it is not a diplomatic gain, but rather a victory for the Moroccan approach in winning the bet of changing international law by broadly convincing the international community of the viability of its autonomy project and its compatibility with the goals and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, which has become more accepting of the modern formula that self-determination is achieved through autonomy, not through secession.
The solution of self-governance as a political, administrative, economic, cultural and social mechanism has become a more realistic policy due to the international system's tendency towards consensus over the past three decades, to prevent any disintegration or separation resulting from the internal conflicts that almost all countries of the world face. This has become clearly evident in this general trend at the United Nations, as the Working Group on Minorities and its Commission on the Promotion of Human Rights had reached, since 1995, an understanding of the reasons behind the United Nations' failure to apply the principle of self-determination in several regional conflicts, including the conflict over the Moroccan Sahara. It was established for them that self-determination leading inevitably to full independence is not possible, and indeed impossible to implement through a mechanism of organizing a referendum according to the new standards that differ from the colonial and protectorate period of the last century. It is more effective to search for a middle ground through which the form of self-determination becomes synonymous with participatory democracy that ensures the coexistence of no victor and no vanquished in the calculations of all concerned parties, in order to preserve the unity of the state and the particularities of small entities and to guarantee the stability of states and peoples.
By adopting this initiative, Morocco has been able to make the southern provinces of the Kingdom an effective platform to ensure stability and attract investment to play geopolitical roles in the African interior, specifically in the Sahel, the west of the continent, and then the South Atlantic. This has strengthened international support, which relies on this safe gateway against the disturbances that the Sahel and Sahara region is experiencing in general, and the impact of this on international peace and security, which is what the Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has pointed out in his successive reports on the situation in the Moroccan Sahara since 2018.
Thus, autonomy can form an effective legal framework and a viable means of managing this fabricated conflict that may arise from political participation, because it will grant all components of society the right to manage their sphere without resorting to internal separation, and to share power among themselves within the framework of coexistence and the preservation of the unity of the state. This is what prompted this project from the beginning to avoid going into details about the form of this autonomy and to be content with presenting its general orientations, stressing in its preamble that it provides a negotiating basis that leads to consensus, and it is evident from it that a large part of it is extended for dialogue with the other parties within the framework of the outstretched hand that His Majesty the King has been talking about in his recent speeches.
The openness of the country's highest authorities to all active components of society—political parties of all stripes, civil society groups, and advisory institutions, including the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs—has contributed to a new approach to managing the issue of the Kingdom's territorial integrity under His Majesty King Mohammed VI. This has been instrumental in shaping the Moroccan autonomy initiative. It is quite possible that these entities will continue this participatory approach in refining and updating this Moroccan autonomy proposal, as its effectiveness and viability lie in this national consensus, which has strengthened the leading role of the domestic front in advocating internationally for the legitimacy and justness of the Kingdom of Morocco's territorial integrity.
