MINURSO. The UN mission in the Sahara may be entering its final phase

Key points

Adopted on October 31, 2025, UN Security Council Resolution 2797 also reopened the question of MINURSO’s future, a mission created in 1991 around a referendum that has been absent from UN resolutions since 2001.

Under U.S. pressure, its mandate was renewed for one year in exchange for a strategic review of its future tasks. While Washington views MINURSO as a costly and ineffective peacekeeping operation, the United Nations continues to defend its stabilizing role in the region.

For Morocco, the issue is not to call the mission’s existence into question, but to ensure that it remains strictly confined to maintaining stability on the ground, without drifting into a political mechanism or a human rights monitoring body. Information gathered by Médias24 indicates that the mission has probably entered its final phase.

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The details

On October 31, 2025, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2797. It was a historic text, in that for the first time in 50 years of dispute over the Moroccan Sahara, a UN decision moved clearly in Morocco’s direction.

Couched, of course, in diplomatic language, since its most concrete contribution was not an explicit recognition of the Kingdom’s sovereignty over its Saharan provinces, but rather an endorsement of the primacy of the autonomy initiative as the basis for negotiating a political status. In that sense, the United Nations’ supreme body nonetheless moved in the direction of completing Morocco’s territorial integrity, opening the way for this position to be further anchored in international law through its resolution.

At the same time, the question of MINURSO’s future arose. Established in April 1991 by the same Security Council, the mission carries, in its full title, its original purpose: the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, a reference to the consultation it was initially meant to supervise before it eventually became impossible for the parties to agree on a single electoral body. Thus, from Resolution 1380 of November 27, 2001 onward, no mention of any referendum would appear in subsequent Security Council resolutions, up to the present day.

As a result, MINURSO essentially came to play a peacekeeping role. A role which, incidentally, it now struggles to fulfill, following the Polisario’s unilateral breach of the ceasefire that had been in force since September 1991. In October 2023, the separatist movement, directed by Algeria’s military junta, even killed a Moroccan civilian in strikes using projectiles likely of Iranian manufacture on Smara, the spiritual capital of the Sahara. MINURSO was, of course, unable to do anything about it.

U.S. pressure on MINURSO

Thus, when negotiations over the final draft of Resolution 2797 began among Security Council members, the mission’s future was seriously called into question. The first version circulated on October 22, 2025 by the United States, as penholder, provided for only a three-month mandate, which was eventually renegotiated to one year after three rounds of revisions. But only after Washington secured a concession: “a strategic review regarding MINURSO’s future mandate, taking into account the outcome of the negotiations”, to be conducted “within six months of this mandate’s renewal”.

Behind this U.S. pressure lies, of course, first and foremost, the desire to prevent the resolution of the Sahara dispute from stalling any further. But there is also, and above all, in the mind of President Donald Trump’s administration, the imperative of cutting unnecessary budgets allocated to the United Nations, to which the United States remains the world’s leading financial contributor at 22%, just ahead of China at 20%. For all the reasons outlined above, MINURSO naturally finds itself in Washington’s crosshairs.

“We’re looking at a strategic review of the peacekeeping force in Western Sahara that has been there for 50 years,” said, on March 20, 2026, the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, during a congressional hearing, citing MINURSO among “these ineffective and costly peacekeeping missions”.

A more cautious line at the United Nations

On the UN side, however, the tone remains different. This was particularly clear during the closed-door consultations held on April 23, 2026 by the Security Council on MINURSO, as part of the strategic review provided for under Resolution 2797.

Although Médias24 was not able to obtain the exact content of the remarks made that day by UN officials, it was nevertheless able to confirm that the Director of the Policy and Mediation Division at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), Asif Khan, acting as “the lead evaluator for the review”, argued in favor of keeping MINURSO in place, at least for the time being.

“In his briefing to the Council, Mr. Khan as well as Personal Envoy de Mistura and MINURSO Special Representative of the Secretary-General Ivanko highlighted that MINURSO continues to play a stabilizing role in the region, contributing to a conducive environment for the advancement of the political process,” a UN peacekeeping spokesperson told us.

The spokesperson also revealed that “based on his engagement with key interlocutors and visit to the region in late March [from March 24 to 30, 2026, Editor’s note],” Mr. Khan had been able to present “a preliminary assessment of potential tasks for the future of MINURSO.” This may suggest that UN officials believe the mission could take part in the process that follows the ongoing negotiations between Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and the Polisario. But all of this remains conditional on reaching “a mutually acceptable political solution”.

“[Mr. Khan] explained that in the event of a final agreement, he would be able to expand in a report on UN support to what is decided by the parties, to be endorsed by the Security Council,” the spokesperson added.

Morocco’s red line

Morocco, for its part, has consistently taken a legalist approach: it has always respected MINURSO and provided it with support whenever necessary — as long as the mission remained bound by what is now its primary role: monitoring the peace.

In his latest report of September 30, 2025 on the situation concerning the Sahara, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres himself noted that, “during the reporting period, MINURSO continued strengthening coordination and cooperation with the Royal Moroccan Army.” By contrast, “the MINURSO Force Commander remained unable to establish direct contact with the military leadership of Polisario Front”.

That said, when, in April 2013, the Obama administration, then in power in Washington, sought to expand MINURSO’s mandate to include so-called “human rights monitoring”, Rabat reacted immediately and forcefully: in a sharply worded statement, the Royal Cabinet denounced “the partiality of this type of unilateral and non-consultative approach, in terms of content, context and method”. Washington subsequently backed down.

For this reason, one may assume that Morocco could accept, as part of the implementation of a future agreement and, above all, the monitoring of its strict application by the Algerian-Polisario camp, that MINURSO play a supporting role. But no more than that, because what would be at stake is Morocco’s national sovereignty. A sovereignty for which the Kingdom has never ceased to fight, ultimately managing to have it recognized despite all the maneuvers undertaken to undermine it.