ABSTRACT
Although the human rights and colonialist issues associated with the long-standing unresolved conflict over Western Saharan nationality and self-governance might bring to mind the excesses of apartheid South Africa, the struggle of the Saharawis has most often been compared to that of the Palestinians. 1 In both cases, it has been argued, a stateless people is divided, living under the military authority of a foreign nation in what it considers its own territory or in a refugee area likewise subject to military intervention, and both occupations were carried out at least in part through the settlement of civilians in the disputed region. These cases have received international attention in recent years because the principal antagonists—Morocco and Israel—are strategic allies of the United States and key European countries. Faced with the unyielding positions of powerful nation members on both sides of the question, the United Nations has appeared powerless to create the conditions for a referendum on statehood in the Western Sahara, which was the aim of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 690 in 1991, some sixteen years after Spain withdrew from the region.
