Decolonization’s unfinished business: How US-Russia geopolitics abandoned Western Sahara’s self-determination struggle
Original framing: “UN’s peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara ends after 35 years following US-Russia standoff - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The voices of Sahrawi refugees in Tindouf—where over 170,000 people live in precarious conditions—are systematically excluded from UN narratives. Women like **Mina Saifi**, who founded the *‘Union of Sahrawi Women’* in the camps, have documented how gender-based violence and poverty have worsened under prolonged displacement. Meanwhile, Moroccan Sahrawi activists, such as those in the *‘20 February Movement’*, face imprisonment for advocating autonomy, yet their perspectives are absent from Western media. The UN’s focus on ‘peacekeeping’ rather than ‘peacebuilding’ ensures these marginalized voices remain invisible, reinforcing systemic power imbalances.
The UN’s withdrawal from Western Sahara is not an endpoint but a revelation: that decolonization, when left to great powers, becomes a perpetual holding pattern where the colonized are reduced to pawns in a geopolitical game.
The conflict’s persistence exposes the hypocrisy of a UN system that treats self-determination as a negotiable commodity while ignoring Indigenous governance models, historical precedents, and the voices of those most affected—from Sahrawi refugees in Tindouf to Moroccan dissidents in prisons. The real trickster here isn’t the Sahrawi people or even the UN, but the myth of ‘neutral peacekeeping’ that allows Western states to claim moral high ground while enabling occupation. Solutions must begin with dismantling this myth: by centering Sahrawi-led governance, enforcing resource sovereignty, and holding great powers accountable through alternative diplomatic structures. The path forward lies not in another frozen ceasefire, but in a radical reimagining of justice—one that treats decolonization as a moral imperative, not a geopolitical afterthought.