History · Western Sahara

Western Sahara: The Last Colony

A stretch of Atlantic desert the size of Britain — a Spanish colony until 1975, then claimed by Morocco and Mauritania, fought over with the Polisario Front, and still, half a century later, the only territory in Africa whose decolonisation the UN has not completed

By Worldlore Editorial · 10 September 2026

A long low sand-and-stone wall running straight across flat open desert under a pale sky
The Moroccan "Berm" or Wall — a sand barrier over 2,700 km long, built in the 1980s, that separates the Moroccan-controlled west of Western Sahara from the Polisario-controlled east. (Michele Benericetti / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0)

An unfinished decolonisation

Western Sahara is a sparsely populated territory of Atlantic coast and Saharan interior, roughly the size of the United Kingdom, with perhaps 600,000 people. Its status is disputed: Morocco controls about four-fifths of it and considers it an integral part of the kingdom; the Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, proclaims it the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and controls the rest. The United Nations still lists it as a "non-self-governing territory" whose people have not exercised their right to self-determination — the only such case in Africa. This account outlines the history and attributes the competing claims rather than adjudicating them.

A short history

  1. to 1800s

    The Sahrawi tribes

    Nomadic Arab-Berber (Hassaniya-speaking) tribes; no centralised state.

  2. 1884

    Spanish claim

    Spain declares a protectorate over the coast at the Berlin Conference era.

  3. 1934–1958

    Spanish Sahara

    Spain consolidates control of the interior.

  4. 1965

    UN decolonisation call

    The UN begins pressing Spain to decolonise.

  5. 1973

    Polisario founded

    A Sahrawi liberation movement launches an armed struggle against Spain.

  6. 1975

    The turning point

    The ICJ opinion; the Green March; the Madrid Accords; Spain withdraws.

  7. 1975–1991

    The war

    Morocco and Mauritania invade; Polisario fights on; Mauritania withdraws in 1979.

  8. 1991

    Ceasefire

    A UN mission (MINURSO) is deployed to organise a referendum.

  9. 2020

    Ceasefire ends

    Fighting resumes at low intensity along the Wall.

The Sahrawi and Spanish Sahara

The territory's people, the Sahrawi, are Hassaniya Arabic-speaking tribes of mixed Arab and Berber (Sanhaja) descent, historically nomadic camel herders and traders who moved across the western Sahara without regard to later colonial borders. There was no unified Sahrawi state, though the tribes had their own assemblies and, in the 19th century, resisted French and Spanish encroachment under leaders such as Ma al-Aynayn. Spain claimed the coast in the 1880s and slowly extended control inland, completing it only in the 1950s; it exploited the world-class phosphate deposits at Bou Craa and rich Atlantic fisheries, and did little else. As decolonisation swept Africa, the UN from 1965 repeatedly called on Spain to hold a referendum on self-determination.

Rows of tents and mud-brick buildings in a Sahrawi refugee camp in the Algerian desert
A Sahrawi refugee camp near Tindouf in south-western Algeria. Between 100,000 and 170,000 Sahrawis have lived in these camps since 1975, administered by the Polisario Front. (jaysen naidoo / Wikimedia Commons)
A plain white modernist Spanish colonial cathedral with a slender tower in Laayoune
The Spanish-built cathedral in Laayoune (El Aaiún), founded as the capital of Spanish Sahara in 1938. Morocco has made it the administrative centre and largest city of the territory it controls. (Bjørn Christian Tørrissen / Wikimedia Commons)

1975: the Green March and the war

1975 was decisive. In October the International Court of Justice, asked by Morocco to rule that the territory had been Moroccan before colonisation, found that while some tribes had ties of allegiance to the Moroccan sultan and to Mauritania, there were no ties of territorial sovereignty that would override the population's right to self-determination. Days later King Hassan II launched the "Green March": some 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians walked south to claim the territory. With Spain's dictator Franco dying, Spain signed the Madrid Accords in November, agreeing to withdraw and hand administration to Morocco and Mauritania — an arrangement the UN has never recognised as transferring sovereignty. As Spain left in early 1976, Morocco and Mauritania divided and occupied the territory; the Polisario Front, which had been fighting Spain since 1973, declared the SADR and, armed and hosted by Algeria, fought both. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled to camps around Tindouf in Algeria, where many remain.

Ceasefire and stalemate

Mauritania, exhausted, made peace with Polisario and withdrew in 1979; Morocco promptly annexed its zone. Through the 1980s Morocco built the Berm — a fortified sand wall, eventually over 2,700 kilometres long, backed by minefields and radar — that pushed Polisario's forces into the barren strip along the Algerian and Mauritanian borders and secured the useful western part, including Bou Craa and the coast. A UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991 established MINURSO, a peacekeeping mission whose central task was to organise a referendum on independence or integration with Morocco. That vote has never been held: the parties could not agree on who was eligible to vote, and Morocco later withdrew its support for any option that included independence, offering instead autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty. Polisario and the SADR — a member of the African Union, recognised by dozens of states, though not by the UN or the Arab League — reject autonomy without a vote on independence.

Western Sahara now

The dispute has hardened. In 2020 Polisario declared the ceasefire over after a Moroccan military operation reopened a road at the southern border, and low-intensity skirmishing along the Wall resumed. The same year the United States recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory in exchange for Morocco normalising relations with Israel; France did so in 2024, and Spain shifted in 2022 to backing Morocco's autonomy plan as the basis for a settlement. Many other states, and the UN, still call for a self-determination referendum. Morocco has invested heavily in infrastructure, housing and subsidies in the territory and settled large numbers of Moroccans there; human-rights groups report restrictions on pro-independence expression and protest. The economy runs on phosphates, fishing, and, increasingly, renewable energy and farming projects.

What Western Sahara carries

Western Sahara is the piece of the decolonisation map that was never filled in. In 1975, as Spain left, a UN-supervised vote on the territory's future was within reach; the Green March, the Madrid Accords and the war that followed overtook it, and fifty years later the referendum the UN keeps calling for has still not happened. The Wall, the camps and the frozen conflict are what a decolonisation left unfinished looks like.

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