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Deadlock once again in Western Sahara’s quest for self-determination
International diplomacy has once again failed to make progress in the Western Sahara conflict. On Thursday, the UN special envoy for Western Sahara, Peter Van Walsum, announced that his mandate had not been renewed and said that he was pessimistic about finding a solution that both parties found satisfactory.
The Sahrawis lost confidence in Van Walsum in April, when he publicly declared that he believed independence for Western Sahara was "unrealistic". His words not only outraged politicians in the Polisario Front, but also left the UN Security Council divided.
In an article published by the El País newspaper, Van Walsum announced the end of his mandate and said his stance on Western Sahara independence had not changed. "As long as Morocco occupies a large part of the territory and the Security Council is unwilling to put pressure on it, there cannot be an independent Western Sahara", the former envoy is reported to have said. But Walsum was primarily addressing the Sahrawis: if the Polisario renounced independence and was willing to negotiate a compromise, he said, "it could immediately count on wide international support".
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seems to have responded to the Polisario Front's criticism of Van Walsum. The President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Mohamed Abdelaziz, sent a letter to Ki-moon asking him to dismiss the special envoy because he believed the diplomat could no longer act as mediator after taking sides.
Another set-back for UN diplomacy
The efforts of international diplomacy in the Western Sahara conflict have suffered another set-back, just four years after the resignation of James Baker, the envoy who came up with the most ambitious route map for the territory to date. The Baker Plan, which emerged from negotiations held between 1997 and 2003, recommended that Western Sahara be made a semi-autonomous region of Morocco for a transition period of five years, after which a multi-option referendum on self-determination would be held, the options being full sovereignty, semi-autonomy or integration into Morocco. The plan was unanimously endorsed by the Security Council, but Rabat eventually rejected it and the peace process reached another dead end.