By Owei Lakemfa
A very dangerous situation has arisen in the world with the United Nations Security Council, UNSC, on October 31, 2025 deciding illegally, to reverse a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, UNGA. This has not caught world attention. It has not hit internal headlines because there is a universal complicity. Almost all countries are afraid of the permanent members of the UNSC whose connivance led to this illegal resolution that challenges the very foundations of the world body.
An indication of the degeneracy in international relations is that eleven of the 15 members of the UNSC voted for this conscious rape of international relations while three abstained. China and Russia who wield the Veto Power, could have truncated this dangerous drift and endorsement of brigandage, but chose to abstain. Only Algeria, an historical warrior of international justice and champion of universal de-colonisation, stood by principles.
Regrettably, apart from the United States, France and Britain, historical and notorious champions of colonialism, exploitation and injustice, seven other countries voted along with them to stand the world on its head. These are Greece, cradle of Western Civilization; Denmark, a supposed liberal country; Slovenia that has known vicious war and should value peace; Somalia, for decades now, a failed state; Sierra Leone, still recovering from vicious wars; South Korea, on war footing since 1953, and the pliant states of Guyana and Panama. Pakistan, which fought a violent war of independence, managed a dubious abstention.
Humanity, after two universal slaughters called the First and Second World Wars, resolved to ensure world peace, freedom and justice by creating the UN in 1945.
In furtherance of this, its General Assembly on December 14, 1960 adopted Resolution 1514 (XV) titled “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.”
This Declaration, it stated, was passed: “Mindful of the determination proclaimed by the peoples of the world in the Charter of the United Nations to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
Equally, that the Resolution was passed: “Recognising the passionate yearning for freedom in all dependent peoples and the decisive role of such peoples in the attainment of their independence.” UNGA added that it is: “Convinced that all peoples have an inalienable right to complete freedom, the exercise of their sovereignty and the integrity of their national territory.”
It, therefore, passed the Resolution which stated clearly that: “The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
Second, all peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
It was on this basis many countries became independent and members of the UN.
But while other colonialists granted independence outright, Spain decided in 1975 to hand over its Western Sahara colony to Mauritania and Morocco, itself a former colony of France, as a war booty.
Today, 50 years later, the resources of that country continues to be looted by Morocco, Spain and the European Union, EU.
Back in 1975, in order to end the war of independence by the patriotic POLISARIO Front of the Saharawi, the UN requested the International Court of Justice, ICJ, to advise on the claims of Morocco that it is occupying its sister African country on the basis that Western Sahara was part of its territory before Spanish colonialism. The ICJ on October 16, 1975, declared that Morocco’s claims were false as there were no territorial ties between it and Western Sahara.
But Morocco ignored the ICJ findings and the position of the UN that Western Sahara be freed. The war of independence between Western Sahara and Morocco ended with the “The Settlement Plan” of 1988 put forward by the UN. Both sides signed the Agreement which provided for “a ceasefire and the holding of a referendum without military or administrative constraints.”
Under the referendum which was also endorsed by the African Union, the Saharawi, by 1992, were to vote for either independence or to join Morocco.
But today, 37 years later, that referendum has been blocked by Morocco because it feared it would lose as its antics to rig it had failed. Morocco had poured its citizens into Western Sahara to claim they are Saharawi with the right to vote. The UN had then established an international voters verification body with Morocco and Western Sahara as observers.
The criteria adopted by the verification body knocked out the Moroccan infiltrators. Each voter was required to have either the Spanish identity cards the colonialists had issued in Western Sahara or have their names captured in the 1974 Spanish census in the territory. The voter could also vote if his parents or grand parents were captured in the Spanish census or could prove that they had lived in Western Sahara under Spanish colonisation. Another criterion was if the voter could prove that he belonged to a tribe in Western Sahara.
There was another quite vital cultural difference between Moroccans and the Saharawi; the Moroccan has two names: his name and his surname. But the Saharawi has three: his name, his father’s name and his grandfather’s name. When these criteria were applied, Morocco found it could not infiltrate the referendum and that left to themselves, the Saharawi will vote for independence. Therefore, it stopped the referendum.
So, to deny the Saharawi their right to self-determination, and hand over Western Sahara, a founding Member of the African Union, to Morocco, the UNSC decided to vote for a so-called Moroccan Autonomy Plan that seeks to reverse the UNGA Resolution 1514 of 1960 and prevent the Saharawi from exercising their fundamental human right to determine their future.
Under the Moroccan plan, now endorsed by the UNSC, the Saharawi are to become a region under Morocco while the latter is to exercise:
”the attributes of sovereignty, in particular the flag, the national anthem and the currency;
the attributions linked to the constitutional and religious powers of the King, Commander of the Faithful and guarantor of freedom of worship and of individual and collective freedoms;
national security, external defence and territorial integrity;
external relations, and;
the judicial order of the Kingdom.”
All lovers of freedom and justice, all countries committed to human development and a better world, need to reject this blatant rape by the UNSC, uphold the sovereignty of the UNGA and the fundamental human rights of all persons and peoples
