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On June 10 and 11, 2024, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization held a new session in New York devoted to the Western Sahara conflict. As in previous editions, the meeting was a platform for the representatives of Morocco and Algeria to exchange criticism. These heated exchanges speak volumes of the historical facts behind this conflict, which benefit the Kingdom.
Indeed, on November 27, 1961, a few months after the creation of the Committee on Decolonization by the United Nations General Assembly, Morocco offered to host the members of this mechanism entrusted with the task of studying the application of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, in accordance with resolution n°1514 of December 14, 1960.
This proposal was accepted, given that Morocco was one of the 38 African and Asian states to co-sponsor resolution 1514. From May 21 to 25, 1962, Tangier hosted the first meeting of the Committee, held away from the United Nations headquarters in New York. The representatives of the countries that then made up the UN body were even invited to a meeting in Fez with King Hassan II.
At the time of these events, Algeria was still under French colonial rule, and Muammar Gaddafi had not yet put an end to the monarchy in Libya with the coup d'état of September 1, 1969, before welcoming the creation of the Polisario in 1972. Historical truths that Ambassador Omar Hilale had recalled during his address at the C24 regional seminar for the Caribbean, organized in May 2017 in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Capitalizing on the diplomatic success of the Tangier meeting, the kingdom decided to knock on the UN door, putting the Western Sahara issue on the C24 agenda in 1963. On October 16, 1964, the Committee regretted that «the administering Power has not yet taken steps to implement the Declaration» in these territories.
The text also requested the UN Secretary-General to communicate to Spain the content of the resolution and to inform the Committee of the measures taken by «the administering Power with a view to the implementation of the present resolution».
During the debate, the representative of Mauritania proposed incorporating «a recommendation to encourage direct negotiations between the two countries concerned, namely Spain and Mauritania, aiming for the liberation of the Spanish Sahara within the framework of the territorial unity of Mauritania». On the other hand, the Moroccan ambassador at the time affirmed the kingdom's readiness for dialogue with Spain on the future of the province.
For the record, in 1964, Rabat had not yet recognized Mauritania's independence and blocked its membership of the Arab League. It was not until 1969 that King Hassan II decided to lift his veto, much to the dismay of the Istiqlal Party.
General Franco's regime responded, in its own way, to the UN's requests by organizing municipal elections in the Sahara in 1963 and launching the Saharan Assembly (Jamaa) in 1967. This was well before the creation of the Polisario.
