The mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Morocco’s southern provinces in Western Sahara, MINURSO, has officially come to an end, 35 years after its deployment in 1991. The mandate of the UN peacekeeping operation expired at midnight on October 31.
This comes after the UN Security Council failed to adopt a resolution extending the mandate of the peacekeeping operation following a contentious meeting on Friday, October 30, marked by Russia’s decision to veto a US-drafted resolution seeking to further advance the UN-led political process.
Russia, an ally of Algeria’s regime, used its veto against the draft resolution, which received the support of 11 countries. Three countries abstained, including China, Pakistan, and Somalia.
The resolution sought to advance the UN-led political process and remove further ambiguities, as it proposed renaming MINURSO to MINUSO, removing the letter “R” that references the word “referendum.”
The proposed change reflects the fact that the UN itself has acknowledged the impossibility of holding a referendum, an outdated narrative pushed by Algeria’s regime to support separatism and challenge Morocco’s Autonomy Plan and sovereignty over its southern provinces through the Polisario Front.
MINURSO also failed to stop the Polisario’s continued violations of the ceasefire for years, including in 2020, when the group declared the end of its commitment to the ceasefire and violated it through attacks targeting Morocco’s territorial sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security, including repeated attacks on Es-Semara.
Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita addressed the relevance of MINURSO’s original mandate in an interview with 2M on Saturday, October 31, explaining why the mission’s name and responsibilities no longer reflected the realities surrounding the dispute.
Bourita particularly questioned the continued reference to a referendum in MINURSO’s name, arguing that the UN itself had acknowledged that this option was no longer possible.
“First of all, the R in the mission’s name itself no longer makes any sense today. As a diplomat, it bothers me to see a mission whose name includes the word ‘referendum,’ or the R. Why? The UN says this option is no longer on the table,” Bourita said.
He also referred to the fact that the referendum process had effectively reached a dead end since 2000, arguing that the mission’s mandate no longer included an active component dedicated to organizing such a vote.
Bourita further highlighted the growing dynamic toward autonomy and the strengthening of Moroccan sovereignty, questioning how the international community could continue to maintain two realities simultaneously: one recognizing the Autonomy Plan and Moroccan sovereignty while acknowledging that a referendum is no longer possible, and another maintaining a mechanism whose name continues to refer to a referendum.
“This is the anachronism here: the imbalance between reality and a situation that belongs to another era,” he said.
Bourita also questioned MINURSO’s effectiveness as a UN peacekeeping mission, explaining that such a mechanism should compare the commitments made by the parties with their actual practices and conduct on the ground.
He pointed to the Guerguerat incident in 2020, following which the Algeria-backed Polisario announced that it was no longer committed to the ceasefire, arguing that the group’s subsequent actions and practices had revealed persistent violations.
He added that the Polisario had repeatedly declared that it was no longer committed to the ceasefire and had put this position in writing on numerous occasions internationally.
Bourita questioned what MINURSO could effectively monitor as a ceasefire observer when one of the parties had openly declared that it was no longer committed to the agreement.
“MINURSO’s entire work has become unbalanced. It is no longer functioning as it should,” he said.
The US also raised the continued relevance of the referendum component during Friday’s Security Council meeting, with US Ambassador Mike Waltz criticizing Russia’s decision to veto the US-drafted resolution.
“And here we are in 2026. And unfortunately—truly unfortunately, and not the intention of the United States—some members of this Council have used their veto to preserve the letter ‘R’—for the referendum and the name that the United Nations hasn’t even been preparing to hold for decades,” Waltz said.
He stressed that Washington continues to support the principle of self-determination, arguing that there are different ways to realize and express the will of a people.
“Of course, the United States supports the principle of self-determination. There are many ways to realize and express the will of any given people,”he said, referring to Morocco’s Autonomy Plan.
The 11 countries that supported the US-drafted resolution expressed regret over Russia’s veto and reiterated their support for Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as a basis for resolving the dispute.
11 members of the Security Council also voted against a Russian alternative seeking to extend MINURSO’s existing mandate without the changes proposed by Washington. The United States vetoed the Russian draft.
