Western Saharaالصحراء الغربية

The people of the territory, the Sahrawis, descend from Arab Beni Hassan tribes that moved into the western Sahara from the 13th century and mixed with Sanhaja Amazigh groups already there. They speak Hassaniya Arabic, shared with Mauritania and parts of southern Morocco, Algeria and Mali, and were organised in tribes and confederations such as the Reguibat, Tekna and Oulad Delim.

Life was nomadic: camel herding across huge grazing ranges, caravans that linked Morocco with the Senegal river, and poetry and tea as the social arts. Religious leaders played a strong role; Sheikh Ma al-Aynayn founded Smara around 1898 as a religious and trading centre and led resistance to French expansion.

Precolonial ties are part of the dispute. In 1975 the International Court of Justice found legal ties of allegiance between some tribes and the Moroccan sultan, and land rights links with the Mauritanian entity, but not territorial sovereignty for either, and it upheld the Sahrawi right to self-determination.

Spain claimed the coast in 1884, founding Villa Cisneros (now Dakhla) as a trading post. Control of the interior came only in the 1930s. The colony was a backwater until phosphate deposits were found at Bou Craa in the 1940s; a conveyor belt more than 100 km long, among the world's longest, still carries rock to the coast near Laayoune.

In the 1960s the UN listed the territory for decolonisation. Sahrawi nationalism grew; in 1970 Spanish troops suppressed a protest at Zemla in Laayoune, and in 1973 the Polisario Front was founded to fight for independence. Spain prepared a census for a referendum in 1974.

Spanish remains visible: older Sahrawis speak it, the Canary Islands are the nearest European link, and Spanish-era buildings line the waterfront in Dakhla.

In November 1975, with Franco dying, King Hassan II of Morocco sent about 350,000 unarmed civilians across the border in the Green March. Spain then signed the Madrid Accords, handing administration to Morocco and Mauritania; the UN never accepted them as a transfer of sovereignty. Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic on 27 February 1976 and fought both. Tens of thousands of Sahrawis fled to camps near Tindouf in Algeria, where many of their descendants still live.

Mauritania made peace and withdrew in 1979, and Morocco took over the southern part around Dakhla. Through the 1980s Morocco built a series of sand walls, the berm, about 2,700 km long, guarded by troops and minefields. It left most of the coast, towns and phosphates on the Moroccan side and a thin desert strip to Polisario.

A UN ceasefire began in 1991, and MINURSO was set up to organise a referendum. Arguments over who could vote stalled it indefinitely. In 2007 Morocco proposed autonomy under its sovereignty; Polisario insists on a vote including independence. After a Polisario blockade of the Guerguerat road and a Moroccan operation there in November 2020, Polisario declared the ceasefire over and low-level exchanges of fire along the berm resumed.

The UN still lists Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory and has had a personal envoy trying to restart talks. The African Union admitted the SADR in 1984, which led Morocco to leave the organisation until 2017, when it rejoined with the SADR still a member.

Morocco has won growing support for its autonomy plan. The United States recognised Moroccan sovereignty in December 2020 alongside Morocco's normalisation with Israel; Spain called the plan the most serious basis for a settlement in 2022; France and the United Kingdom moved closer to it in 2024–25; and in October 2025 the UN Security Council renewed MINURSO in language that treated autonomy as a basis for negotiation (check the exact wording and later developments). Algeria backs Polisario and cut diplomatic ties with Morocco in 2021.

Several countries have opened consulates in Laayoune and Dakhla since 2020, a sign of recognition. Courts in the European Union have ruled that EU–Morocco trade and fisheries deals cannot cover products from the territory without the consent of its people, which keeps the legal question alive.

The territory is flat, stony hamada broken by dry riverbeds such as the Saguia el-Hamra, with dune belts toward the coast. The cold Canary Current keeps the Atlantic shore mild and foggy, and trade winds blow strongly in spring and summer. It is one of the least densely populated places on earth.

The Dakhla peninsula encloses a lagoon of about 400 km², shallow and warm enough for oyster farming, rich in birds and flat for kitesurfing. The offshore waters are among the richest fishing grounds in the Atlantic, which is why fisheries are central to the economy and to legal disputes.

Morocco has built large wind farms near Laayoune and Tarfaya, desalination plants, a new Atlantic port at Dakhla due in the late 2020s (check) and roads that link the N1 south to Mauritania, as part of a push to make the region a gateway to West Africa.

In the Moroccan-administered towns, Sahrawis live alongside a larger population of settlers from Morocco who came with state jobs, subsidies and tax breaks. Laayoune has wide avenues, a stadium and government buildings; Dakhla is growing with fishing, tourism and construction. Police presence is heavy, and human rights groups report restrictions on pro-independence activism.

Sahrawi women wear the melhfa, a long dyed cloth wrapped over the head and body. The tea ceremony, with three glasses brewed by one person in front of guests, is at the centre of hospitality. Weddings, poetry in Hassaniya and camel races mark the calendar.

In the refugee camps near Tindouf, about 170,000 people by UN estimates (numbers are disputed) have lived for five decades on aid, with their own schools, SADR institutions and a cultural life in exile. Few visitors see both sides; this page covers only the Moroccan-administered coast.