New York (United Nations), 16 October 2025 (SPS) – The Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) of the United Nations General Assembly today adopted a resolution without a vote on the question of Western Sahara under the item on the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
The Fourth Committee took note of the report of the UN Secretary-General dated 31 July 2025 submitted to the General Assembly at its current session, in which the Secretary-General emphasized that the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) of the General Assembly and the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples address the question of Western Sahara as an issue of decolonization.
It also recalled all General Assembly and United Nations Security Council resolutions on Western Sahara, including Security Council resolution 690 (1991) of 29 April 1991, by which the Security Council established, under its authority, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).
In the resolution, the Committee reaffirmed the inalienable right of all peoples to self-determination and independence in accordance with the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 containing the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
It also reiterated the responsibility of the United Nations towards the people of Western Sahara and requested the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (C-24) to continue to consider the situation in Western Sahara and to report thereon to the General Assembly at its eighty-first session. It also invited the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its coming session a report on the implementation of the present resolution.
In a statement to the media, Dr Sidi Mohamed Omar, Member of the National Secretariat, Representative of the Frente POLISARIO at the United Nations and Coordinator with MINURSO, stressed that the resolution adopted by the Fourth Committee today reaffirms, as is the case every year, the legal status of Western Sahara as a issue of decolonization as well as the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence in accordance with the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) containing the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
The Sahrawi diplomat added that the reaffirmation by the Fourth Committee of the legal status of Western Sahara as a decolonization issue is a strong and clear response to the efforts made by Morocco, the occupying state, to alter the legal status of the Sahrawi issue by repeating the same misleading allegations and bringing in a “group” of mercenaries and agents to repeat its false propaganda before the Fourth Committee, as well as by restoring to verbal bullying and other “vulgar” methods, as the Committee has witnessed.
This resolution is also a clear response to the positions of some states that support Morocco, the occupying state, and its expansionist policy in Western Sahara by promoting “proposals” that contradict the spirit and letter of the Charter of the United Nations and aim at undermining the inalienable right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, independence, and permanent sovereignty over their natural resources and respect for the territorial integrity of their territory.
The question of Western Sahara, as it has been the case every year, has been strongly present in the high-level General Debate of the General Assembly where several heads of State and Government made statements in which they expressed their strong support for the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination and independence, and for the holding of a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara and the decolonization of the last colony in Africa. Many States and petitioners also expressed the same positions during the sessions of the Fourth Committee, which began its work on 3 October.(SPS)
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