Western Sahara Legal Case: The International Law Narrative of Unresolved Conflict

The legally and internationally labeled Spanish Sahara is the oldest

colonized territory in Africa. Colonized by Spain in 1884, Western

Sahara has been an unchallengeable statutory case file in the UN tasks of

the dispute between various actors at different times. Following trilateral

negotiations, Spain ceded control of this territory to Morocco and Mauritania

under the Madrid Agreement of 1976. The Polisario fully refused this treaty and

with the help of Algeria waged an armed group to struggle specifically against

Morocco. After fifteen years of an intense military fight, the United Nations

(UN) brokered a ceasefire in 1991 that terminated the war and established a new

phase of a long and pointless peace process. After outlining the history of the

Western Sahara conflict, this paper analyzes the question of legality case starting

from the settlement plan process through the Baker plans to the 2007 proposals

by both parties, and finally clarifies the reasons and motives behind the deadlock

in the Western Sahara. Therefore, the United Nations has been fastened in the

middle of a perplexed conflict that several parties are directly or indirectly

involved in. The key reason for the failure of this statutory question was the lack

of management and supervision of serious diplomatic negotiations.