![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Western Sahara and Timor-Leste (East Timor) are twin cases marking an incomplete end to the era of decolonization. The two are remarkably similar: they are former European colonies with peoples who had been promised self-determination only to be invaded within weeks of each other in late 1975 by neighboring states, themselves recently decolonized. Decades would pass while the international community stood by. The people of Timor-Leste eventually achieved freedom against the odds while most of Western Sahara and half the Saharawi people remain under foreign occupation, the scene of established human rights violations and the ongoing export of natural resources. For 25 years, Morocco has refused the Saharawi people a referendum, with the United Nations organization unable to respond as a result of a threatened veto by some permanent members of the Security Council. However, a Saharawi state arguably has come into being, enjoying popular legitimacy, governing institutions and accepted control over a part of Western Sahara. Moreover, regionally and within the African Union, the Saharawi Republic enjoys broad recognition and advocacy for its people. While drawing on lessons from the comparative experience of self-determination in Timor-Leste, this paper contends that the UN should follow the example of the African Union and welcome the Saharawi Republic as a member state. To achieve that result, a wider recognition among states is needed. The UN General Assembly, by employing its 1950 Uniting for Peace resolution, can decide to ‘consider the matter immediately' and compel a breakthrough which the Security Council has so far not been able to deliver.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to several reviewers who offered comments in the preparation of this paper. All errors remain mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Pedro Pinto Leite is a Portuguese/Dutch international jurist who lives in Leiden. He studied at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon and obtained a Masters degree in international law from the Leiden University. Since November 1991 he is the secretary of the International Platform of Jurists for East Timor (IPJET). He is also a member of the International Council of the International Association of Jurists for the Western Sahara (IAJUWS). He is the editor of two collective works, International Law and the Question of East Timor (CIIR/IPJET, London, May 1995) and The East Timor Problem and the Role of Europe (IPJET, Lisbon, September 1998), co-editor of International Law and the Question of Western Sahara (IPJET, Oporto, 2007), Le droit international et la question du Sahara occidental (IPJET, Oporto, 2009) and El Derecho Internacional y la Cuestión del Sáhara Occidental (IPJET, Oporto, 2012), and wrote many monographs, chapters in other books and articles on self-determination questions.
Notes
1 ‘Namibia – UNTAG Background’, United Nations, New York, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/untagFT.htm (accessed August 10, 2015).
2 Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 1975, 12.
3 East Timor (Portugal v. Australia), Judgment, ICJ Reports 1995, 90.
4 ‘Saharawi' refers to the name of the original people of the territory of Western Sahara which was known as Spanish Sahara until 1975. The Saharawi population as an identifiable ethnic, cultural and linguistic group is about 350,000 people: 160,000 in the refugee camps at Tindouf, 120,000 in occupied Western Sahara and a diaspora concentrated in Mauritania and Spain. On 27 February 1976 the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed, the act later ratified by the Saharawi electorate in the acceptance of a national constitution.
5 See most recently the annual report of the UN Secretary-General to the UN Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the situation concerning Western Sahara' (April 10, 2015), UN doc. S/246/2015. The Secretary-General is properly oblique about the application of international law in its various forms to Western Sahara, consistent with the wider UN organization's characterization of the matter not as conflict or territorial occupation or, for the most part, a matter of decolonization, but in anodyne terms as ‘the question' of Western Sahara. Annual Secretary-General Reports on Western Sahara can be found online at http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minurso/reports.shtml (accessed July 26, 2015).
6 Jacob Mundy, ‘The Question of Sovereignty in the Western Sahara Conflict' (presentation at the IAJUWS conference ‘La Cuestión del Sáhara Occidental en El Marco Jurídico Internacional', Las Palmas, Canary Islands, June 27–28, 2008).
7 See Tony Hodges, Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983); Jeffrey Smith, ‘State of Exile: The Saharawi Republic and its Refugees', in Still Waiting for Tomorrow: The Law and Politics of Unresolved Refugee Crises, ed. Susan Akram and Tom Syring (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014, 25–53); Stephen Zunes and Jacob Mundy, Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010); Karin Arts and Pedro Pinto Leite, eds., International Law and the Question of Western Sahara (Leiden: IPJET, 2007).
8 For useful histories of the invasion of Timor-Leste and the 1999 referendum see James Dunn, East Timor: A People Betrayed (Milton, Queensland: Jacaranda Press, 1983); Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong, The War Against East Timor (London: Zed Books, 1984); Irena Cristalis, East Timor: A Nation's Bitter Dawn, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2009); and Richard Tanter, Mark Selden, and Stephen R. Shalom, eds., Bitter Flowers, Sweet Flowers: East Timor, Indonesia, and the World Community (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
9 Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 2010, 403, para. 79.
10 This began with UN Security Council 1754 (2007) (April 30, 2007) and has continued, for which see now UN Security Council Resolution 2218 (2015) (April 28, 2015). The Security Council resolutions have also reflected the change in the UN organization's position that there be a ‘just and lasting' resolution of the question of Western Sahara, to one that is ‘just, lasting and mutually acceptable'.
11 See United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 Namibia, July 27, 1978.
12 This might be called civil society consensus, a shared values structure that was important in Timor-Leste given the legacy of violence during the occupation of that territory, and the challenges of reconciliation after the August 1999 referendum.
13 For a discussion of the 1975 agreement, the Madrid Accords, see Hodges, Western Sahara. The crucial obligation to ensure for the Saharawi people a referendum was assumed by the UN in 1991, in agreement with Morocco and the Saharawi people (acting through their national liberation movement the Frente Polisario), the terms of which are in two reports of the UN Secretary-General to the Security Council in 1990 and 1991.
In November 1975 Spain legislated an end to its colonial responsibility for the Sahara, the position of successive governments since. However, Spanish criminal law (and by incorporation international criminal law under the Rome Statute 1998 of the International Criminal Court) applies in Western Sahara as a matter of recent decisions by the appeals court the Audencia Nacional (July 2014 and April 2015).
14 The Settlement Plan, built on the earlier peace proposal of the Organization of African Unity, became effective in September 1991 with a ceasefire and measures to prepare for a referendum. MINURSO, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, was established by UN Security Council Resolution 690 (April 29, 1991) with a mandate to monitor the ceasefire and conduct the referendum.
15 Mauritania signed a peace treaty with the Frente Polisario in August 1979 and recognized the SADR in February 1984.
16 This was acknowledged by independent observers and also Morocco. See e.g. ‘Desert War Flares Anew’, Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1988, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-10-06/news/8802050099_1_polisario-front-morocco-moroccan (accessed April 2, 2015).
17 See also Jacob Mundy, ‘Morocco Settlers in Western Sahara: Colonists or Fifth Column', Arab World Geographer 15 (2012): 95.
18 See the statement of former US Ambassador Frank Ruddy, a former senior official with MINURSO, to the United States Congress on January 25, 1995 at http://www.arso.org/06-3-1.htm (accessed April 2, 2015).
19 The berm in its successively built segments is longer than 2400 kilometres. It remains heavily fortified, the largest minefield in the world, with perhaps 65,000 Moroccan FAR soldiers stationed along it. The berm was reportedly constructed with the assistance of Israel, the USA and Saudi Arabia, although few details are available. Following the ICJ's reasoning in its 2004 Palestine Wall Advisory Opinion, it can be safely concluded that construction of the berm violated international law.
20 Ruddy's report, above, denounced the obstacles put by Morocco to MINURSO's work. Francesco Bastagli, who in 2005 was appointed UN Special Representative for Western Sahara, strongly criticized UN inaction on Western Sahara and resigned in protest in 2006.
21 This was the voter registration figure on 30 December 1999. The Identification Commission announced the result on 15 January 2000 and the Secretary-General reported it to the Security Council that 17 February. See UN doc. S/2000/131 (February 17, 2000). ‘From Morocco's point of view, the numbers indicated total defeat'. Zunes and Mundy, Western Sahara, 215.
22 Framework Agreement on the Status of Western Sahara, Annex I of UN Secretary-General Report S/2001/613 of June 20, 2001.
23 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan may have instructed his personal envoy to go no further than autonomy for Western Sahara within the Moroccan state. Marrack Goulding, a former UN Undersecretary-General, said that Annan asked him ‘to go to Houston to persuade James Baker III to accept an appointment as Special Representative and try to negotiate a deal based on enhanced autonomy for Western Sahara within the Kingdom of Morocco'. Marrack Goulding, Peacemonger (London: John Murray, 2002), 214–15.
24 Timor-Leste's 1999 referendum had two options: autonomy within the state of Indonesia, and independence. Under the Western Sahara Framework Agreement autonomy would be imposed on the Saharawi people. This is contrary to Principle IX of Resolution 1541 (XV): ‘[I]ntegration should be the result of the freely expressed wishes of the Territory's peoples acting with full knowledge of the change in their status, their wishes having been expressed through informed and democratic processes impartially conducted and based on universal adult suffrage'.
25 ‘A Non-Self-Governing Territory can be said to have reached a full measure of self-government by: (a) Emergence as a sovereign independent State; (b) Free association with an independent State; or (c) Integration with an independent State.' Resolution 1541, Principle VI.
26 ‘The exceptional importance of the principle of the self-determination of peoples in the modern world is such that today the principle has been held to constitute an example of jus cogens, that is, ‘a peremptory norm of general international law’, to quote the expression used in article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties’. Hector Gros Espiell, The Right to Self Determination: Implementation of United Nations Resolutions, study prepared by the Special Rapporteur of the Sub Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, E/CN.4/Sub.2/405/Rev.1, 1980.
27 During the time of Baker's appointment until his second plan, the people of Timor-Leste completed their self-determination and achieved independence. The Saharawi people were certainly aware of the rapid progress and eventual successful result of independence under UN administration of the self-determination process in Timor. The two states recognize each other, exchange diplomatic representatives and have some social and cultural contacts.
28 Even the New York City Bar Association has noted that ‘the right to self-determination under international law pertains to the indigenous inhabitants of a Non-Self-Governing Territory – in this case the Saharawis who inhabited the territory – and cannot be invoked by non-indigenous settlers’. The Legal Issues Involved in the Western Sahara Dispute – The Principle of Self-Determination and the Legal Claims of Morocco (New York: New York City Bar Association, Committee on the United Nations, June 2012), 94.
29 Tobey Shelley, ‘Behind the Baker Plan for Western Sahara’, Middle East Research and Information Project, August 1, 2003
30 Statement by Emhamed Khadad, member of the National Secretariat of the Frente Polisario and coordinator for MINURSO, at a meeting on Western Sahara at the University of Utrecht, March 25, 2002.
31 On the response of the Saharawi people and Morocco to Baker Plan II see Zunes and Mundy, Western Sahara, 234 ff.
32 In March 2006 during a visit to the territory Mohammed VI declared: ‘Morocco will not cede a single inch, nor a grain of sand of its dear Sahara'. See the statement at http://www.arso.org/01-e06-1314.htm (accessed July 26, 2015).
33 See http://w-sahara.blogspot.com/2007/04/moroccos-plan-full-text.html (accessed April 4, 2015). Frank Ruddy described the proposal as ‘the latest in a long line of illusions that Morocco has created over the years to distract world attention from the real issue', adding ‘The Moroccan limited autonomy plan for Western Sahara … might sound like a step forward, at least until one reads the not-so-fine print. Article 6 of the plan provides that Morocco will keep its powers in the royal domain, especially with regard to defense, external relations and the constitutional and religious prerogatives of his majesty the king. In other words, the Moroccans are offering autonomy, except in everything that counts. It gets even more disingenuous where the Moroccans say their plan will be submitted to a referendum, but fail to provide details'. ‘Foreword' in Arts and Pinto Leite, International Law and the Question of Western Sahara, 12.
34 The Proposal is at http://www.arso.org/PropositionFP100407.htm#en (accessed April 5, 2015). The Frente Polisario restated its acceptance of Baker Plan II, held out the prospect of citizenship to Moroccan settlers at independence, and waived reparations claims between the two states. The Frente's 2007 Proposal remains its formal position as well as a commitment to a ‘genuine referendum'.
35 Resolution 1754 (2007) adopted by the Security Council at its 5669th meeting, April 30, 2007.
36 See e.g. the 2012 annual report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the situation concerning Western Sahara' (April 5, 2012), UN doc. S/20121/197, paras. 72 ff. See also ‘Preliminary Observations: Robert F. Kennedy International Delegation Visit to Morocco Occupied Western Sahara and the Refugee Camps in Algeria' (September 3, 2012), http://rfkcenter.org/images/attachments/article/1703/Final091012.pdf (accessed April 1, 2015).
37 Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 2010, 403
38 Ali Lmrabet, ‘Un responsable marroquí reconoce crímenes de guerra en el Sahara', El Mundo, June 17, 2008, see also ‘Morocco’, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, US State Department, February 23, 2001.
39 The AU has been a consistent supporter of the Saharawi state. On 27 March 2015 the AU Peace and Security Council issued a communiqué to the UN Secretary-General insisting on Saharawi self-determination and calling the export of natural resources from Western Sahara ‘illegal exploitation'. See http://www.peaceau.org (accessed April 15, 2015).
40 Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, para. 55.
41 Dietrich Rauschning, Katja Wiesbrock, and Martin Lailach, Key Resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly 1946–1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997), 186.
42 ‘The validity of the principle of self-determination, defined as the need to pay regard to the freely expressed will of peoples, is not affected by the fact that in certain cases the General Assembly has dispensed with the requirement of consulting the inhabitants of a given territory. Those instances were based either on the consideration that a certain population did not constitute a “people” entitled to self-determination or on the conviction that a consultation was totally unnecessary, in view of special circumstances’ (Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, para. 59).
43 During the era of decolonization after 1960, Africa saw few formal acts of self-determination. The 1956 referendum in French Togoland was not about self-determination per se, because it did not include the option of independence and would be later rejected by the UN General Assembly. The 1989 and 2011 referenda in Namibia and South Sudan were done with all parties having agreed that a choice for independence would be accepted. The 1993 referendum in Eritrea served to confirm a de facto independence because Eritrea had successfully broken away from Ethiopia, its referendum done to gain UN and OAU recognition.
44 See Esther Heidbüchl, The West Papua Conflict in Indonesia: Actors, Issues and Approaches (Berlin: Verlag, 2007).
45 Apart from the positions of the parties, there remains the problem of establishing a current (accurate) voter roll for self-determination. Arguably, the UN remains responsible for that as a matter of its commitments in the 1990–91 referendum and ceasefire agreement. But it is difficult to envision the UN having liberty of action in Western Sahara to conduct an objective registration. The problem is alleviated, of course, if the referendum is on those terms proposed by Morocco in 2007. Completeness of registration matters less where independence is not at stake.
46 Saharawi vote each four years for local government in the ‘independent’ zones of the territory, and in self-administering camps in Algeria.
47 Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (December 26, 1933) 165 LNTS 19: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and capacity to enter into relations with the other states.
48 Although it did not recognize the Democratic Republic of East Timor after its unilateral declaration of independence in November 1975, Portugal severed diplomatic relations with Indonesia after the invasion.
49 Or, more accurately, the restoration of independence or ‘realization of full independence'.
50 The Saharawi speak Hassaniya, a distinct Arab dialect.
51 After Morocco completed the berm in the late 1980s, the Saharawi acquired control to the east of it, confirmed by the 1990–91 UN ceasefire and referendum agreement together with free passage to the area allowed by Mauritania and Algeria.
52 These figures were obtained in interviews with SADR officials at international conferences, including in Algiers in December 2012 and Abuja in May 2015. Algeria's position in international law appears to be unique: it recognizes the SADR and accords it a refugee and government-in-exile presence within its territory. “Security Council Extends Western Sahara Mission until 30 April 2016, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2218” (2015), April 28, 2015.
53 In July 2002 SADR President Mohamed Abdelaziz was elected vice-president of the African Union at the new organization's inaugural summit. Morocco is the only African state not a member of the organization.
54 Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 83. Similarly, Hector Gros Espiell (The Right to Self-Determination, para. 45) notes that the ‘foreign occupation of a territory – an act condemned by modern international law and incapable of producing valid legal effects or of affecting the right to self-determination of the people whose territory has been occupied – constitutes an absolute violation of the right to self-determination'.
55 Hans Corell, the former UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, describes the Madrid Accords in these terms: ‘The Madrid Agreement did not transfer sovereignty over the territory, nor did it confer upon any of the signatories the status of an administering power; Spain alone could not transfer that authority unilaterally. The transfer of the administration of the territory to Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 did not affect the international status of Western Sahara as a Non-Self-Governing Territory. On 26 February 1976, Spain informed the Secretary-General that as of that date it had terminated its presence in Western Sahara and relinquished its responsibilities over the territory, thus leaving it in fact under the administration of both Morocco and Mauritania in their respective controlled areas.’ Hans Corell, ‘Western Sahara – Status and Resources’, New Routes 4 (2010): 10–13.
56 Hector Gros Espiell reasoned that: ‘the right of peoples to self-determination has lasting force, [and] does not lapse upon first having been exercised to secure political self-determination … ', The Right to Self Determination, 45.
57 Resolution 1813, ‘The Situation Concerning Western Sahara', United Nations Security Council, New York, April 30, 2008.
58 The 2014 resolution of the General Assembly was formulaic, unchanged in its preamble and operative recitals from those of the past decade. See UN General Assembly Resolution, ‘Question of Western Sahara', A/Res/69/101 (December 5, 2014) at para. 2: ‘[The General Assembly] Supports the process of negotiations initiated by Security Council resolution 1754 (2007) and further sustained by Council resolutions 1783 (2007), 1813 (2008), 1871 (2009), 1920 (2010), 1979 (2011), 2044 (2012), 2099 (2013) and 2152 (2014), with a view to achieving a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution, which will provide for the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara, and commends the efforts undertaken by the Secretary-General and his Personal Envoy for Western Sahara in this respect'.
59 A protection, however, that cannot be taken for granted when the case of West Papua is considered. Although the ‘Act of Free Choice' was fraudulent (admitted as such by the then UN Under-Secretary-General Chakravarthy Narasimhan and confirmed recently by the Dutch academic Pieter Drooglever), West Papua was removed from the UN's list of non-self-governing territories and has since been considered part of the Republic of Indonesia. See Pieter Drooglever, An Act of Free Choice: Decolonisation and the Right to Self-Determination in West Papua (The Hague: Institute of Netherlands History, 2009).
60 Personal communication with senior Saharawi officials in 2012 and 2015. The present inchoate form of Saharawi statehood appears to have been a successful effort, alongside maintaining the Frente Polisario as the Saharawi people's national liberation movement. Comporting itself as a state has gained the SADR acceptance in AU circles and serves to valuably prepare the state for what is referred to as the ‘restoration of full independence'.
61 See the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)/ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) ‘Canary Current Large Marine Ecosystem Project' at http://www.canarycurrent.org/ (accessed April 1, 2015).
62 The status of Saharawi diplomats reflects this. Ubbi Bachir and Ali Mahamud Embarek, formerly Frente Polisario representatives in The Netherlands were later SADR ambassadors in Nigeria and Panama, respectively.
63 The former United Nations juris consult Hans Corell, in his private capacity, has recently suggested alternatives to a UN directed referendum. See ‘The Responsibility of the UN Security Council in the Case of Western Sahara', International Judicial Monitor (Winter 2015): 1. He posits three options, namely: (i) a mandated governing presence for the UN in Western Sahara, similar to that in Timor-Leste during its post-referendum transition to independence; (ii) Security Council direction to Spain to resume its responsibilities as the colonial administering state; and (iii) recognition of the Saharawi Republic. Corell recognizes the options could be combined. ‘[Recognizing] Western Sahara as a sovereign state … should be acceptable from a legal point of view. It would not deprive the people of Western Sahara from seeking a different solution to their self-determination in the future, if they so wish.' Ibid., 2.
64 See Susan Marks, ‘Kuwait and East Timor: A Brief Study in Contrast’ (in Arts and Pinto Leite, International Law and the Question of East Timor, 174–9), comparing the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq with the Indonesian invasion of Timor. For the reasons outlined above, her conclusions apply a fortiori to the Moroccan invasion of Western Sahara.
65 At paragraph 2 of the resolution. Article 25 of the UN Charter obligates members of the United Nations to implement decisions of the Security Council.
66 See the March 27, 2015 Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU PSC) communiqué.
67 ‘For us not to recognise SADR in this situation is to become an accessory to the denial of the people of Western Sahara of their right to self-determination. This would constitute a grave and unacceptable betrayal of our own struggle, of the solidarity Morocco extended to us, and our commitment to respect the Charter of the United Nations and the constitutive act of the African Union.' Letter of August 1, 2004 at http://arso.org/MBK.htm (accessed April 1, 2015).
68 Even as the organized international community will not urge the UN to act on the ‘question' of Western Sahara, no state publicly supports Morocco's territorial claim to the Sahara. The kingdom's isolation was highlighted in 2011 when South Sudan achieved independence, joined the AU and established diplomatic relations with the SADR. There has been a campaign in recent years by Morocco to promote withdrawal of recognition of the SADR by states in the Global South, with mixed success. Commentators agree that withdrawal of recognition does not signify or hasten the end to a state's formal existence, for which see article 6 of the Montevideo Convention. Such ‘withdrawals’ have bordered on the absurd, for example Guinea-Bissau's first recognizing the SADR in 1976, withdrawing recognition in 1997, again extending recognition in 2009 and withdrawing it in 2010.
69 See ‘Committee on Foreign Affairs at the Swedish Parliament Calls on the Government to Recognize SADR’, Sahara Press Service, November 15, 2012, http://www.spsrasd.info/en/content/committee-foreign-affairs-swedish-parliament-calls-government-recognize-sadr (accessed April 11, 2015).
70 Stephen Zunes has compared solidarity movements in the causes of Timor and Western Sahara, and noted this is a ‘factor working against Saharawi independence … despite their impressive efforts at building well-functioning democratic institutions in the self-governed refugee camps where the majority of their people live, the Saharawis have never had the degree of international grassroots solidarity that the East Timorese were able to develop, which eventually eroded support of the Indonesian occupation by Western powers'. See http://www.spectrezine.org/resist/wsahara.htm (accessed April 2, 2015). ‘Though an international solidarity movement does exist for Western Sahara, primarily in Europe, it pales in comparison with the movement in support of East Timor, which grew dramatically in the 1990s, and helped encourage greater media coverage on the human rights situation.’ (East Timor and Western Sahara: a Comparative Analysis on Prospects for Self-Determination, Presentation to the Conference on International Law and the Question of Western Sahara, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, October 27–28, 2006).
71 See http://www.wsrw.org (accessed April 7, 2015).
72 See http://www.birdhso.org (accessed April 7, 2015).
73 See http://www.wshrw.org (accessed April 7, 2015).
74 Law 03/2009 of January 21, 2009 Establishing the Maritime Zones of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. The legislation resulted in the European Parliament reviewing the EU–Morocco 2007 Fisheries Partnership Agreement, which had allowed European fishing in the coastal waters of Western Sahara. The EU Parliament rejected such fishing in December 2011 which resumed in 2014 under revised arrangements with Morocco.
75 The use of force against colonial or otherwise illegal armed occupation is permissible under international law. In its resolution ‘Importance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination' (December 3, 1982), UN doc. A/RES/37/43, the General Assembly affirmed ‘the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle'.
76 Corell, ‘The Responsibility of the UN Security Council in the Case of Western Sahara', 1.
77 UN General Assembly Resolution 377 A (November 3, 1950). See Jean Krasno and Mitushi Das, ‘The Uniting for Peace Resolution and Other Ways of Circumventing the Authority of the Security Council’, in The UN Security Council and the Politics of International Authority, ed. Bruce Cronin and Ian Hurd (London: Routledge, 2008), 173–95.
78 The emergence of a fully independent Saharawi state will engage the question of Morocco's presence in Western Sahara. The case of Timor-Leste suggests acceptance in the face of such a fait accompli.