ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the possibility of a future change in the status of Western Sahara that is opposed by the Sahrawi people, and what this could mean for the future of international law itself, in particular the peremptory norms on self-determination and territorial integrity which currently underpin the jurisprudence of decolonisation. The chapter argues that such principles have a load-bearing character within the legal and political architecture of the UN system, beyond the decolonisation context, and that their erosion in the case of Western Sahara could come to be seen as emblematic of a 21st-century shift away from a rules-based international order.
