Shahid Hafed, 6 December 2025 (SPS) – In a statement to Sahara Press Service (SPS) today, Dr Sidi Mohamed Omar, Member of the National Secretariat, Representative of the Frente POLISARIO at the United Nations and Coordinator with MINURSO, refuted the claims recently made by the foreign minister of Morocco, the occupying state, regarding the latest Security Council resolution.
Full text of the statement:
In an interview with the Spanish news agency (EFE), issued on 4 December 2025, the foreign minister of Morocco, the occupying state, commented on the latest UN Security Council resolution 2797 (2025) and, as usual, he made several unfounded claims. Whether out of ignorance or intentionally, he claimed that “self-determination” is equivalent to “the parties expressing their will” or even “signing an agreement after negotiations.” This is a false claim that is not supported by any source in the literature of the United Nations since its inception in 1945.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of the UN Charter (Article 1(2)), and resolutions 1514 (1960), 1541 (1960) and 2625 (1970) of the General Assembly, the principal organ with competence for decolonization, as well as the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on this matter, should know well the following facts:
First, the right to self-determination is a collective right belonging to peoples, not to individuals or “parties” as the foreign minister of the occupying state falsely claims. Second, the right to self-determination is a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens), as affirmed by the ICJ (19 July 2024), meaning that it is a fundamental, inalienable (it cannot be taken away, transferred, or waived) and non-derogable right. Third, the outcomes of the exercise of the right to self-determination by the people of a territory subject to a decolonization process, as is the case with Western Sahara, are set out in General Assembly resolutions 1541 (1960) and 2625 (1970). The two resolutions define the “modes” for exercising the right to self-determination and affirm that the essence of self-determination lies in the genuine expression, through democratic and informed processes, of the will of the people concerned regarding their political status, without any external interference. Thus, it is clear that the minister of the occupying state derives his distorted understanding of self-determination from a source known only to him.
Using the same twisted logic, the minister of the occupying state claims that “nowhere does it (the resolution) say that the right to self-determination is a referendum”. In fact, no one else makes such a claim, and he is confusing self-determination, which is a right, with referendum, which is a means or mechanism for exercising that right.
For the Frente POLISARIO, as it explained in its expanded Proposal submitted to the Secretary-General on 20 October 2025 (S/2025/664; paragraphs 21 and 22), the referendum, provided for in the UN-OAU Settlement Plan, was formally accepted by both parties, the Frente POLISARIO and Morocco, as a “proposal” put forward by the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity through their joint good offices. Based on the agreement and acceptance by both parties of the UN-OAU Settlement Plan, the Security Council and the General Assembly unanimously approved the referendum as a means to enable the Sahrawi people to exercise their right to self-determination. The Security Council established, under its authority, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) in 1991 to conduct the referendum.
In this sense, the referendum is not a “proposal,” a “preferred solution,” or a “position” of any party, but rather a reasonable, practical, and consensus-based solution, as proposed and emphasized by the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity. Therefore, it is simply a means to an end, which is to ascertain the wishes of the Sahrawi people in exercising their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and the relevant General Assembly resolutions.
The foreign minister of the occupying state here should explain to his domestic public opinion the statement made by King Hassan II on 27 September 1983 before the thirty-eighth session of the General Assembly, in which he officially declared: “Morocco tells you that it is ready for the referendum to take place tomorrow, if you wish it. Morocco is ready to grant all facilities to any observers from wherever they may come so that there may be a ceasefire and a just, equitable and true consultation. And, finally, Morocco solemnly undertakes to consider itself bound by the results of that referendum.” (A/38/PV.8, para. 26; emphasis added).
Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the minister of the occupying state says in the same interview that “nowhere does it (the resolution) say that the right to self-determination is a referendum”. Therefore, he should also explain to his own domestic public opinion the meaning of the phrase in paragraph 27 of the expansionist Moroccan “proposal,” which literally states that “a referendum will constitute a free exercise of the right to self-determination.” Perhaps he also has another meaning for the “referendum” derived from the same source known only to him.
The minister of Morocco, the occupying state, goes on with his tendentious interpretations, falsely claiming that Security Council Resolution 2797 (2025) refers to “people in the sense of population” and that the word “people” for them means “population,” whilst denying the existence of the Sahrawi people.
It is well known that all colonial powers justify their colonialism by denying the existence of the colonized peoples. However, the denial by the foreign minister of the occupying state of the existence of the Sahrawi people, which is explicitly stated in the Security Council resolution, is not only an insult to everyone’s intelligence, but is also a completely false claim.
What is indisputable is that Security Council resolution 2797 (2025) refers (operative paragraph 3) to the people of Western Sahara (“el pueblo del Sáhara Occidental”, “le peuple du Sahara occidental”). It may be useful to remind the foreign minister of the occupying state that the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly (the Decolonization Committee) adopted a resolution without a vote on the “question of Western Sahara” on 16 October 2025 in which it reaffirmed not only the international status of Western Sahara as a decolonization issue but also the responsibility of the United Nations towards the “people of Western Sahara”.
It is also well-established that all resolutions adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council concerning Western Sahara since 1975 recognize and identify the “people of Western Sahara” as the sole holder of the right to self-determination with respect to Western Sahara. Furthermore, the UN-OAU Settlement Plan of 1991 and the related Houston Accords of 1997, which are the only two agreements accepted by the parties to the conflict, recognize the “people of Western Sahara” as the exclusive owner of the right to self-determination with regard to Western Sahara. This clearly demonstrates that the Sahrawi people are the only internationally recognized political entity with the right to determine the final status of the Territory, not the “population” residing there, including settlers from the occupying state and others.
The ruling of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice of 4 October 2024 is very significant in this regard, as it stated that: “the majority of the current population of Western Sahara is not part of the people holding the right to self-determination, namely the people of Western Sahara. That people, which for the most part has been displaced, is the sole holder of the right to self-determination with regard to the territory of Western Sahara. The right to self-determination belongs to that people, and not to the population of that territory in general, of which – according to the estimates provided by the Commission at the hearing before the Court of Justice – only 25% is of Sahrawi origin” (paragraph 128; emphasis added).
In conclusion, no one really cares much about the claims of the foreign minister of Morocco, the occupying state, nor about the colonial lexicon from which he draws his tendentious “interpretations,” simply because he belongs to a country where people are stripped of their sense of being a “people” and forcibly transformed into mere “subjects” who are forced to live under a medieval, despotic regime based on enslavement, suppression of individual and collective freedoms, and trampling on human dignity and rights. Therefore, he is the last one who can talk about “people,” “popular will,” or “self-determination,” because he simply does not understand the meaning of these terms.
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