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Gibson Nyikadzino, Zimpapers Politics Hub

In the 21st century, Africa is still home to its last colony, Western Sahara! Without their right to full existence, actions committed against the people of Sahrawi are meant to entrench and perpetuate their marginality. Decolonising Africa is an existential mission that requires more than just language and clichés.

Colonisation in the past was enabled by Europeans and their African collaborators and comprador-bourgeoise. Today, against the Sahrawi people, a networked and obdurate Western system sustained by Morocco, an African country, still sees colonial oppression as a system to maintain power. But this has stained the importance of international law.

The struggle for the people of Western Sahara and their plight is a case that requires a restless approach to address. However, the occupying state of Morocco’s obstructionism and the international community’s inaction have left the decolonisation of Western Sahara incomplete.

This has allowed the occupying state to continue its illegal occupation to violate and torpedo the 1991 ceasefire on November 13, 2020, which led to the collapse of the UN peace process and the start of a new war of independence in that region.

It is also becoming evident that Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara highlights a continuing trend of the erosion of post-WWII international norms.

The decline and breakdown of an international order based on upholding laws is being predicted and becoming apparent by the unsuccessful decolonisation of Western Sahara. Western powers continue to ventilate the breakdown of international law in the case of Western Sahara by supporting positions that contradict international law.

Before leaving office in 2021, Donald Trump, now returning to the White House for the second time, recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The same happened recently when French President Emmanuel Macron visited Morocco.

President Macron reinforced the idea that Trump made nearly four years ago, that the territory of Western Sahara is under Moroccan administration. Nonetheless, the United States and France have shown that they have difficulties in upholding international law in the current Western Saharan scenario.

No state has forced the Moroccan government to follow any democratic procedure that would lead to Western Sahara’s independence. Since the 1991 ceasefire which Morocco has breached several times, it has sought settler colonialism and territorial expansion with the backing of the United States and France.

Morocco’s persistent obstruction of UN operations, notably its refusal to permit the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to assess humanitarian situations in Western Sahara for the ninth consecutive year, is detailed in the UN Secretary General’s report from October 2023.

On October 29, President Macron representing a country that is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) openly disregarded international legality by reaffirming his recognition of Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over Western Sahara, illegally occupied militarily since October 31, 1975.

The position of the French government regards Western Sahara contradicts the UN Charter and its resolutions on that matter and undermines its responsibilities as a country expected to defend international law. By doing so, France effectively excluded itself from the UN efforts to decolonise Western Sahara but placed itself in the category of the occupying force, making it an undesirable party for the Sahrawi side. This includes its participation in the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara.

The French’s colonial past should always be put into perspective in this regard. The colonial French governments had direct involvement in attempts aimed to exterminate the Sahrawi people and suppress their resistance since the beginning of the 20th century in the mid-1950s and mid-1970s. The French colonial machinery also used military equipment to bomb Sahrawi civilians.

Contemporarily, the French continue to provide multidimensional support for the illegal occupation of Western Sahara, becoming an accomplice to all the crimes associated with crimes committed against the Sahrawi Republic.

However, the Sahrawi people have the will to resist colonial governance and intensify their legitimate struggle for independence. African countries whose independence was borne out of the brutal liberation struggles, understand the true meaning of freedom from colonialism.