Marrakech – Mauritius has become the latest state to swing behind Morocco’s position on the Western Sahara, declaring in New York that autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty is “the most credible” solution to the regional dispute.
Foreign Minister Dhananjay Ramful delivered the shift Wednesday during talks with his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.
Ramful told the press that Mauritius had revised its stance at a recent cabinet meeting, following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2797. Port Louis now treats the resolution as “grounded in pragmatism” and accepts that autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty offers “the most realistic, most just, and most durable” path to a settlement.
Mauritius’ reversal adds further weight to the diplomatic momentum that Rabat has spent years building around the Autonomy Plan, transforming it from a Moroccan proposal into what its supporters increasingly present as the principal – and, in practice, the only viable – basis for a negotiated settlement.
Under King Mohammed VI’s diplomacy, support has broadened well beyond Morocco’s traditional partners, with Moroccan officials now citing more than 130 countries as backing the initiative or positions aligned with it.
The significance is cumulative: each new endorsement narrows the diplomatic space available to competing formulas, reinforces the autonomy framework as the reference point around which negotiations are expected to revolve, and deepens the international isolation of the separatist option.
What was once treated as one proposal among several is increasingly being positioned by Rabat and its partners as the organizing logic of the entire political process – autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, negotiated through the UN framework, rather than a return to formulas that have failed to produce a settlement for decades.
That momentum framed Bourita’s own address to the General Assembly on Tuesday evening, where he argued that the Sahara question had reached a historic turning point.
He traced the shift to Resolution 2797, adopted in October 2025, and maintained that the artificial dispute had since entered an irreversible course of rupture with the past and projection toward a definitive resolution.
Bourita laid out six principles that, he maintained, leave no room for interpretation or for any reading “between the lines.” There is no solution outside autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, and no mechanism beyond UN-led political negotiation based exclusively on the autonomy initiative.
The responsibilities of the four parties, as defined by Resolution 2797, are not open to discussion or challenge.
He rejected any survival of the status quo favored by the other parties, suggesting that “the train of the political solution is already moving.” He denied all credibility to interlocutors who violate the ceasefire and refuse to honor Security Council resolutions – a direct strike at the Polisario separatists and, by extension, their patrons in Algiers.
He then warned that “no tolerance will be shown toward the continued holding hostage of the populations of the Tindouf camps for half a century,” calling it a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
Bourita also pointed to Morocco’s accelerating development of its southern provinces under King Mohammed VI, spanning infrastructure, universities, health care, and airports.
He closed by projecting that Sahrawis would again perform their national and political duty in Wednesday’s legislative elections, reinforcing genuine democratic representation and their control over local affairs.
