Rabat – The British Broadcasting Corporation, the UK’s London-based national broadcaster, is now using an undivided map of Morocco.
The map, which includes all of Morocco’s southern provinces in the Western Sahara region, is now available on the official website of the British public channel.
The world’s largest broadcasting corporation in terms of gross revenue and viewers published the undivided map in an article introducing the Kingdom of Morocco under the title “Morocco country profile.”
BBC’s adoption of Morocco’s undivided map follows a similar move by BBC Arabic, which has been featuring the same map in its reports since this June.
BBC Arabic first used the undivided map of Morocco in a report on the 2021 African Lion, presented by Syrian journalist Ahmed Fakhoury.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>The UK knows better than any other country that the Sahara has always belonged to Morocco. It said so in the March 1895 agreement it signed with Morocco in which it recognized that the territory was Moroccan. Story does does not lie. Truth always prevails and Morocco will prevail</p>— Samir Bennis (@SamirBennis) <a href=”https://twitter.com/SamirBennis/status/1431748141104181256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>August 28, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
According to political analyst Samir Bennis, the BBC’s move is logical, since “the UK knows better than any other country that the Western Sahara has always belonged to Morocco.”
Bennis attributed the British broadcaster’s adoption of the undivided Moroccan map to the historic relations between the two kingdoms, referencing the “March 1895 agreement the UK signed with Morocco, in which it recognized that the Western Sahara territory was Moroccan.”
Since the US’ recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara in December of last year, several official US and international websites have also included the region in their respective cartographic representations of Morocco.
Among organizations whose websites now display a Moroccan map with the southern provinces are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the US State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Major US airline Delta has also used the undivided map of Morocco on its website since March 2021, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses the undivided map in its COVID-19 travel recommendations.
Several international television stations also include the Western Sahara in their maps of Morocco in their weather reports.
