By Dr. Antonio Tejeda Encinas Lawyer | Techno-Geopolitical Analyst |
In a world that no longer distinguishes between principles and expediency, the latest Security Council resolution on Western Sahara marks something more than a diplomatic turn: it is the consecration of a new orthodoxy, in which the law is invoked to justify its own renunciation. We shall examine, through a geopolitical lens, how the UN has transformed a right — self-determination — into an administrative formula. Between supervised autonomy and postponed justice, what is at stake is not only the future of the Sahrawi people, but the credibility of the international order itself.
I. The echo of a historic vote
On 31 October 2025, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2797 (2025) on Western Sahara. Eleven votes in favour, three abstentions — Russia, China and Pakistan — and the absence of Algeria marked a milestone that few analysts dared to describe with the bluntness it deserves: a de facto mutation of the principle of self-determination into a paradigm of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty has taken place.
The text renews the mandate of MINURSO, but, beyond the formality, it establishes a new operative language: the 2007 Moroccan autonomy plan becomes “the serious and credible basis” upon which negotiations must be conducted. Self-determination is not repealed, but its practical application is deactivated.
In this context, my friend and colleague Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Mackay, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru, declared with his customary frankness that the Sahara dossier “no longer belongs to the Fourth Committee on Decolonization” and that the UN has created “a breaking point” that consecrates Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory. His reading, diplomatically brilliant, condenses what many States already think and few dare to say openly: that the cycle of decolonisation has ended, and that the Sahara must be treated as an internal Moroccan matter.
However, from the standpoint of public international law, that conclusion cannot be sustained without doing violence to the legal architecture of the United Nations.
II. The real breaking point: what Resolution 2797 says — and what it does not say
Resolution 2797 (2025) renews MINURSO’s mandate and the call for a “realistic, pragmatic, enduring and mutually acceptable political solution”. Thus far, continuity. What is new is the insistence on the Moroccan autonomy plan as the only viable reference, relegating the referendum promised since 1991.
But in legal terms, the Security Council has no power to declassify a territory from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, nor to unilaterally redefine its status. That prerogative belongs to the General Assembly, where the Fourth Committee continues to recall, year after year — including in 2025 — that Western Sahara remains an unfinished process of decolonisation.
Positive law, therefore, has not changed. What has changed is the balance of power within the system.
III. Doctrine versus practice: from the referendum to the “viable solution”
The principle of self-determination of peoples is not a poetic clause: it is a peremptory norm (ius cogens) derived from the UN Charter, Resolution 1514 (XV) and multiple pronouncements of the International Court of Justice. In 1975, the ICJ itself, in responding to the request for an advisory opinion on the “legal ties” between the Sahara and Morocco, concluded that no ties of territorial sovereignty existed and that a process of free and genuine self-determination should be carried out.
That legal mandate was never fulfilled. For decades, Morocco and the Frente Polisario argued over who could vote; the referendum was postponed sine die; and MINURSO became an administrative mission without a human rights mandate.
Resolution 2797 does not correct that anomaly: it consecrates it. It elevates the Moroccan plan to the rank of sole reference and omits any mention of the referendum. In practice, self-determination is reduced to administrative autonomy within Morocco’s sovereignty.
IV. Mackay’s reading and the mirage of closure
Rodríguez Mackay (Rodríguez Mackay, former Foreign Minister of Peru and a great friend, whom I bring in here as a first-rate internationalist whose reflections serve as an external spur to this analysis) interprets this turn as a historic full stop, a kind of “normalisation” of the Sahrawi question under the umbrella of international law and of a “sense of reality”. According to his view, the UN has finally accepted that the Sahara “always belonged to Morocco”, and that external actors — Algeria, the Polisario, even the Fourth Committee — are superfluous in this new stage.
His reasoning is coherent from the standpoint of diplomatic logic, but untenable from the legal one. The Council cannot convert an occupation into sovereignty through the accumulation of years or the reiteration of support. International law does not recognise acquisitive prescription over colonial territories, and the Sahara’s belonging to Morocco has never been declared by any international tribunal.
Mackay’s phrase — “the Sahara always belonged to Morocco” — may have symbolic and emotional value, but no legal value. In the language of the law, patriotic sentiments (Mackay is Peruvian) do not substitute for valid titles.
V. The semantic shift: from law to narrative
What has happened in the Security Council is more than a simple vote: it is a mutation of normative language. In less than twenty years, the resolutions have gone from demanding a self-determination referendum to promoting a “viable political solution”. That substitution of words is not innocent: it represents the domestication of international law by diplomacy.
The UN does not deny self-determination: it simply redefines it as “autonomy within the existing State”. Semantics becomes a mechanism of neutralisation: the principle is retained so as not to break the legal framework, but its content is hollowed out to allow for stability. That is moral realpolitik: the kind that dresses itself in legality to justify the renunciation of principle.
VI. The global chessboard and the logic of power
The Sahara conflict has become a secondary piece on a larger board:
- For the US and the European Union, Morocco is a key partner in security, energy and migration control.
- For Algeria, the Polisario and the non-aligned countries, it remains the last open case of African decolonisation.
- For the UN, it is a problem that must cease to be a problem.
Resolution 2797 reflects that institutional fatigue: it is no longer about justice, but about management; the Council acts as guarantor of order, not as interpreter of the law; and the General Assembly maintains a discourse that no one operationalises.
In geopolitical terms, Morocco has won the narrative: stability, development and autonomy sound better than independence, exile and confrontation. But a narrative does not create legitimacy. Only the free participation of a people can do that.
VII. The UN’s paradox: two languages, a single renunciation
Today, two UNs coexist:
- The legal one, which keeps the decolonisation dossier open.
- The political one, which promotes autonomy as a realistic solution.
Between the two an abyss opens up. The first clings to principles; the second kneels before pragmatism. The result is an organisation that preaches justice while practising expediency.
That is the tragedy of contemporary multilateralism: it suffers a crisis of structural coherence. And yet, the Security Council may bless a “political solution”, but it lacks the legitimacy to dictate the identity of a people.
VIII. Justice or management: the price of stability
Accepting the narrative of my esteemed Dr. Mackay — ‘the Sahara always belonged to Morocco’ — means renouncing the legal and moral truth of the conflict: that it is an unfinished decolonisation. If the UN transforms that cause into a Moroccan domestic matter, it will be setting a devastating precedent: that principles can be adapted to the taste of the powerful.
Autonomy, in the abstract, may be a legitimate formula. But if it is imposed without consultation, it is a sophisticated form of annexation. And if the international system accepts it, the right to self-determination will become a contingent privilege, not an inalienable right.
The world does not crumble because norms are broken; it crumbles because they are enforced selectively.
IX. The human dimension of disenchantment
While diplomats celebrate the “maturity of the process”, the Sahrawi refugees continue to live in Tindouf, trapped between hope and oblivion: In the territories under Moroccan control, institutions function, roads expand, investors arrive, and the narrative of progress gains ground. But without free and verifiable consent, development does not replace legitimacy. The Security Council has chosen stability as the supreme value. But stability without justice is merely administered silence.
X. Coda: my fraternal disagreement
I share with Rodríguez Mackay the conviction that the conflict must be brought to a close. I disagree only on the method and the moral price. He sees in autonomy the culmination of history; I see it as a stage that will only be legitimate if it is born of the authentic consent of the Sahrawi people. Mackay embodies the diplomatic thinking that seeks solutions within existing power; I defend the law as the only frontier that prevents power from becoming destiny. The Security Council can dictate stability. But only justice grants peace.
Conclusion: the necessary blasphemy
Resolution 2797 does not close the conflict: it reconfigures it. The UN has not broken its Charter, but it has profaned its spirit. And that, in techno-geopolitical terms, amounts to a foundational blasphemy: the implicit acknowledgement that the international order rests not on the norm, but on calculation.
Perhaps it is the sign of the times: when self-determination becomes synonymous with supervised autonomy, the international system demonstrates that it can survive even its own hypocrisy. And meanwhile, in a desert that still awaits its referendum, history continues — without resolution, but with memory.
Antonio Tejeda EncinasLawyer | Techno-Geopolitical Analyst | President of PCDD-Participación Ciudadana. Democracia. Derechos Digitales and of the Comite Euro Americano de Derecho Digital -CEA Digital Law | CEO of Meta Channel Corporation | Specialist in Digital Law, Algorithmic Ethics, Technology Governance and International Legal Transformation. 🎓 Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) / Doctor iuris – Central European University, summa cum laude (Budapest, 2014).
