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In a column published on Sunday October 13 in the daily newspaper “Expreso”, the former Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Rodriguez Mackay, defends the Moroccan character of the Sahara with supporting legal arguments, believing that it is time, that It was high time for the UN to “take the big step with political realism and follow the course of the majorities” in order to close this issue definitively.
Here is a translation of the article by this former head of Peruvian diplomacy, also an expert in international law:
Par Miguel Rodriguez Mackay
Western Sahara is the northern region of the African continent closest to the Atlantic Ocean and is part of the territory of Morocco. After realizing its enormous geopolitical advantages, desperate exogenous interests were quickly planned, seeking to disrupt Morocco’s history and irrefutable right to the Sahara, in order to thwart its aforementioned Atlantic geopolitical virtue. Thus, the Polisario was quickly created, then, in a flash, the self-proclaimed “Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic”, which has never been recognized by the UN and does not exist according to international law. The objective was, at all costs, to torpedo the Moroccanness of the Sahara, which is the de jure and de facto recognition of the Sahara as a constitutive and intrinsic part of the Kingdom of Morocco, that is to say as part of its territorial integrity. .
The previous confirmation came from the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) irrefutable advisory opinion of October 1975, requested by the UN General Assembly, which concluded that Western Sahara was not “terra nullius”, that is to say “a territory without a master”, which is equivalent to confirming that the said territory has always belonged to Morocco. The Court literally affirmed with regard to the kingdom that “at the time of Spanish colonization, there existed legal links of subordination”, which constitute the sufficient and indispensable basis of the jus imperium of the State and, consequently , of the sovereignty of Morocco, because we cannot interpret otherwise the notion of subordination, which always presupposes dependence on the central power, that is to say on Morocco.
This wise and categorical response from the Court buried forever the idea, also propagated by the aforementioned exogenous interests, of deliberately qualifying Morocco as an “occupying country”, since no State can be called that with regard to its own territory, that is to say that no one is the occupier of what belongs to him.
The caution of King Hassan II (1929-1999) gave way to the historic Green March a few weeks later (November 6, 1975), through which Moroccans became aware of their intrinsic relationship with their own territory, followed by the withdrawal of Spain, the true occupying power in its capacity as colonizer, which had resisted leaving the Sahara in 1956, upon the independence of Morocco.
Without going into further details, I would like to underline the significant progress and the climate of peace experienced by the Moroccan Sahara, the vast majority of whose inhabitants actively participate in Moroccan national life, their homeland. It is their Moroccanness as a people (the minority remains kidnapped by the Polisario in the Tindouf camps, in Algeria). But also the international recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over this region, through the opening of more than 30 consulates of UN countries in the Moroccan Sahara, in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963. These are unilateral acts of sovereigns, which are true. The approval of the powerful Moroccan Westphalian quality in its Sahara, to which must be added the overwhelming approval – more than 115 – of Morocco’s autonomy proposal for this region.
It is time for the UN to take the big step with political realism and follow the course of the majorities. There is a repeated and permanent practice regarding the Moroccan Sahara due to the aforementioned unilateral acts of sovereign States, in accordance with Article 38 of the ICJ Statute, based on the opinio iuris or psychological moment of custom, which corresponds prodigiously to the above. Advisory opinion according to which there is no “terra nullius” from the ICJ, legally and politically confirming the Moroccan nature of the Sahara.
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