Trump's UN Push to Back Morocco's Sahara Plan

Washington pushes a resolution that makes “autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty” the only viable solution

On October 29 the UN Security Council will have to address the Western Sahara dossier, a conflict that has lasted fifty years. The waters are especially turbulent for the Sahrawi people and the Polisario Front.

The Trump administration is seeking to shift the policy line in a further display of its alignment with Morocco. To that end, the United States has drafted a resolution aimed at pressuring the Security Council to abandon the long‑standing principle of self‑determination and to endorse Morocco’s “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty” as the most feasible solution to the dispute.

The draft, backed by France, embraces Rabat’s narrative. It states that the Council “reaffirms its commitment to help the parties achieve a fair, durable and mutually acceptable political solution,” and immediately adds that it “takes note of the support expressed by Member States for Morocco’s autonomy proposal, serious, credible and realistic.”

“The United States wants the UN to drop the self‑determination principle and adopt Morocco’s autonomy plan as the only realistic way forward,” a senior diplomatic source told us.

In practice, this is the first explicit attempt to replace a self‑determination referendum with a controlled decentralisation model. It follows the diplomatic strategy Morocco has pursued since 2007, based on an autonomy proposal drafted together with France—a document that consists of only three pages and has never been fully developed.