UN Peacekeeping Mission in Western Sahara Ends, Leaving Refugees in Limbo

The closure of MINURSO's mandate without a political settlement means tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees remain in Algerian desert camps with no formal mechanism for return.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO, has concluded its operations, leaving unresolved the status of Sahrawi refugees who have lived in camps near Tindouf, Algeria, for decades, according to a report by the South China Morning Post published November 2, 2026.

MINURSO, the Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, was established by UN Security Council Resolution 690 in April 1991 with the primary mandate of organizing a self-determination referendum for the Sahrawi people. That referendum was never held. The mission's end marks the formal closure of a UN operation that lasted more than three decades without fulfilling its founding objective.

The Sahrawi refugee population, estimated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at approximately 173,600 people as of recent census figures, has lived in five camps in the Tindouf region of southwestern Algeria since Morocco's annexation of much of Western Sahara in 1975 and 1976. The Polisario Front, recognized by the African Union as the representative of the Sahrawi people, administers the camps with support from Algeria and international humanitarian organizations.

Morocco administers roughly 80 percent of Western Sahara's territory and has proposed an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty as a political settlement. The Polisario Front and Algeria have consistently rejected autonomy as a substitute for a referendum on independence. This core disagreement was not resolved before MINURSO's mandate ended, and no replacement mechanism for monitoring the ceasefire or advancing a political process has been announced publicly as of the date of this report.

The ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, brokered in 1991, formally broke down in November 2020 when the Polisario Front declared the agreement no longer in effect following a Moroccan military operation near the Guerguerat border crossing, according to reporting by Human Rights Watch at that time. Since then, the Polisario Front has reported periodic low-level armed exchanges along the berm, a sand wall approximately 2,700 kilometers long that Morocco constructed to separate its controlled territory from the desert to the east.

For refugees in the Tindouf camps, the end of MINURSO removes the only UN body physically present in the territory that could document conditions on the ground. Human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have for years called for MINURSO's mandate to be extended to include a human rights monitoring component, a proposal Morocco opposed. That debate is now moot with the mission's termination.

The geopolitical dimensions of the conflict involve multiple external actors. The United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in December 2020 under the Trump administration as part of the Abraham Accords normalization agreements, a position that has not been formally reversed by subsequent administrations. France has also signaled support for the Moroccan autonomy plan. Spain, the former colonial power that withdrew from the territory in 1975 and 1976, endorsed the autonomy framework in 2022, according to a joint communique published by the Spanish and Moroccan governments at that time.

The African Union continues to seat the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, the government proclaimed by the Polisario Front, as a member state, creating an institutional divide between the AU's position and that of the UN Security Council's permanent members who lean toward the Moroccan autonomy framework.

What happens to the ceasefire monitoring function previously performed by MINURSO is not addressed in publicly available UN documentation as of this writing. The Security Council has not announced a successor arrangement. The absence of a monitoring mechanism means that any future military exchanges along the berm would have no impartial third-party verification process in place.

For the refugees themselves, the South China Morning Post report indicates that many continue to hold hopes of return to Western Sahara, a goal that has defined life in the camps across multiple generations. What specific diplomatic track, if any, the UN or the parties intend to pursue in place of the MINURSO framework remains publicly unknown. A formal Security Council statement on the path forward would clarify the international community's next steps.