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The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, lost its mandate on Saturday after Russia vetoed a US-drafted resolution that would have extended it for another year, leaving the 35-year-old peacekeeping operation without legal authority and the territory’s political future more uncertain than at any point in decades.
Eleven of the fifteen Security Council members supported the American draft, including permanent members France and the United Kingdom. Russia cast the lone veto. A separate Russian counter-proposal — which would have renewed the existing mission without any changes — then failed to secure the nine votes required for adoption, receiving only two votes in favour, one against and eleven abstentions.
The US draft had proposed more than a simple renewal. It would have removed the word “referendum” from the mission’s name and made Morocco’s autonomy proposal the sole basis for further negotiations, effectively sidelining the Polisario Front’s longstanding demand for a UN-supervised independence vote. US Ambassador Mike Waltz said after the vote that it was “truly unfortunate” that a veto had been used in 2026 to “preserve the letter R for referendum,” and that Washington’s proposal “would have moved the 50-year conflict forward.” He added that the status quo was not acceptable.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia defended the veto by arguing that the draft favoured one side. “We stress the fact that the Security Council cannot automatically predetermine matters relating to sovereignty,” he said.
Morocco celebrates, Algeria condemns
Morocco’s royal palace welcomed the outcome on Friday, calling for UN personnel and equipment to leave the territory within days and demanding that the Western Sahara question be withdrawn from the Security Council’s consideration altogether. Morocco said it remained committed to the 1991 ceasefire.
Morocco’s UN representative also questioned why Algeria’s delegate was delivering “lectures” on Western Sahara to the Council, and said of Sahrawi people: “Let them go home.”
In El Aaiun, the territory’s capital, Reuters reported a festive atmosphere on Saturday, with dozens of people in traditional Sahrawi dress waving Moroccan flags and displaying portraits of King Mohammed VI in the central Mechoua Square.
Algeria expressed regret over the mandate’s expiry. Its foreign ministry criticised the US draft as excessively biased toward Morocco, and Algeria’s UN delegate thanked Russia for its counter-resolution and praised member states “who have chosen not to associate themselves” with what he called a flagrant attack on the foundations of the UN. He noted that Algeria hosts hundreds of thousands of Sahrawi refugees who have been denied self-determination, and said the tragedy of the Sahrawi people had been “oddly diluted to the concept of refugee populations.”
Sidi Omar, the Polisario Front’s UN representative, told reporters he welcomed Russia’s veto because the US proposal would have undermined Sahrawi self-determination.
What MINURSO was and what its loss means
MINURSO was established in 1991 to monitor a ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front and to organise a referendum on the territory’s future — a vote that was never held. The mission had 155 military personnel and was budgeted at $62 million for the fiscal year that began in June, according to a UN report.
Morocco has controlled Western Sahara since Spain withdrew from the desert territory in 1975. The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, declared the independent Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1976. Decades of fighting displaced at least 170,000 people into refugee camps around Tindouf in Algeria. Low-level fighting has continued since the Polisario Front declared in 2020 that it was resuming armed struggle.
In 2020, Donald Trump recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory during his first term, and Morocco subsequently established diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords. The Security Council had already adopted a resolution last October offering Western Sahara genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, and had asked Secretary-General António Guterres to review the peacekeeping mission.
Selim Balouati Lakhloufi, a historian and researcher based in Morocco, told Al Jazeera that Rabat is pleased because “diplomatic developments at the United Nations are supporting its strategy regarding the Sahara.” He said support from the United States, France and the United Kingdom for Morocco’s autonomy proposal “is gradually shifting the debate away from the right to self-determination and the possibility of independence toward a solution based on autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.”
Lakhloufi also warned that the mission’s expiry is unfavourable for Sahrawi independence aspirations, and that Morocco will likely continue to consolidate its territorial, economic and administrative control. “The proposal for autonomy could end up becoming the main framework for negotiations, pushing independence further and further out of reach,” he said.
Oxfam cautioned that losing MINURSO’s monitoring and de-escalation functions risks undermining security and stability in the territory. Western Sahara remains the last UN-designated non-self-governing territory in Africa, with between 100,000 and 140,000 Moroccan military personnel based there.