The normalisation of Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara by the United Nations (UN) Security Council, as envisaged by Resolution 2797, adopted at the end of October, risks furthering a dangerous trend in international relations that could pave the way for the formal acceptance of other situations of unlawful annexations. These include the conflict in Ukraine, and islands in the Gulf (such as the hardly discussed United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) occupation of Yemen’s Socotra island), as well as those islands occupied by the Chinese military in the South China Sea within its so-called “nine-dash line” (Kattan, 2022). The normalisation of Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara also bears a real risk of becoming a dangerous precedent for the further normalisation of Israel’s occupation and de facto annexation of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza (hereafter the “OPT”), quashing any possible future for a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. The recent Security Council’s Plan for Gaza, with its vague provisions and oblique reference to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, does not seem to dissipate this fear. If accepted, the normalisation of territorial acquisition through prolonged occupations would amount to the death of the cardinal principle in the UN Charter that forbids territorial annexations and would deliver a mortal blow to the much-beleaguered right to self-determination that ushered in the process of decolonisation.  

In this essay, drawing from the recent developments regarding Western Sahara and the OPT, we advance the argument that the Security Council is increasingly normalising situations of unlawful territorial acquisition, thereby eroding the post-1945 prohibition on conquest and weakening the right to self-determination. Western Sahara serves as the primary case through which the mechanism of normalisation can be observed most clearly: a prolonged occupation is re-framed as a “credible” political solution, gradually converting de facto control into de jure legitimacy. We then compare it with the OPTs, and argue that similar logics may be replicated there, as ambiguous governance arrangements and security-driven frameworks risk transforming temporary occupation into a semi-permanent political reality. Both Western Sahara and the OPTs represent prolonged occupations marked by settlement activity, resource exploitation, and the steady extension of the occupying power’s administrative and legal structures. In each context, these material practices have been accompanied by recent Security Council interventions. Together, these cases illuminate a broader pattern in which geopolitical expediency overrides the foundational norms of the UN Charter. 

The Western Sahara Dispute and the Law of Decolonisation  

Western Sahara is perhaps the clearest contemporary example of how prolonged occupation and de facto annexation can be transformed into a politically acceptable, and increasingly legitimised, territorial arrangement. On 31 October 2025, the Security Council voted in favour of Resolution 2797 extending the mandate of the long-standing UN mission for the referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). So far, so good – but for the first time, the UN Security Council also explicitly referenced Morocco’s controversial 2007 “Autonomy Proposal”, inviting parties to take it “as basis … [for] a final and mutually acceptable political solution”, adding that “genuine autonomy could represent a most feasible outcome” (para. 3). The choice to refer to “a” rather than “the most feasible outcome” certainly represents the fruit of disagreements within the Security Council, with some countries insisting on leaving the possibility open for other alternative outcomes.  

It is clear from the declarations of state representatives of several non-Western countries in the Security Council debate that they attempted to resist Western efforts to erode any meaningful notion of self-determination. However, the United States (U.S.) and the United Kingdom (UK) defined the Moroccan Plan as “credible and realistic” and “the most credible, viable and pragmatic basis for a solution” (UN Press, 2025a). And in fact, the language of the Resolution clearly indicates that Morocco’s proposal is the preferred one. Have no doubt about it, this “Autonomy Proposal” (which Morocco calls a “Plan”) is a project for the unlawful annexation and integration of Western Sahara into Morocco. The language of Resolution 2797 effectively normalises Morocco’s de facto annexation of Western Sahara by conferring a measure of international legitimacy upon an occupation that has persisted for half a century. 

This attempt to legitimise Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara stands in sharp contrast to the well-established principles of international law forbidding annexation and supporting national self-determination, as repeatedly affirmed by the UN since the mid-1970s. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its Western Sahara Advisory Opinion on 16 October 1975, in response to a request by the UN General Assembly, which was supported by Morocco at the time. The Court found that while certain “legal ties of allegiance” existed between some of the Sahrawi tribes and the Sultan of Morocco (and, at the time, Mauritania), these ties did not amount to territorial sovereignty (ICJ advisory opinion, 1975, para. 162). On that basis, the Court affirmed that the people of Western Sahara possess a right to self-determination to decide the international status of the territory.  

In light of the ICJ’s findings, the UN General Assembly reaffirmed its commitment to the decolonisation of Western Sahara as a UN-listed Non-Self-Governing Territory, in accordance with Resolution 1514 (XV) of 1960 (Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples). The Assembly determined that the Sahrawi people must be enabled to decide their own political future through a referendum, the outcome of which could include full independence or association or integration with another state, but only as a result of their freely and genuinely expressed choice.  

The General Assembly reaffirmed this position in several subsequent resolutions, including Resolution 34/37 (1979) and Resolution 35/19 (1980), recognising the national liberation movement of the Polisario Front as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people and calling on Morocco to end its occupation of the territory. To facilitate the implementation of this right, the UN Security Council established MINURSO through Resolution 690 (1991), with the primary mandate of monitoring the ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front and organising the long-promised referendum on self-determination. However, despite repeated affirmations of this mandate, political obstacles, disputes over voter eligibility, and Morocco’s resistance to any option that includes independence have paralysed the referendum process. 

The resulting stalemate has allowed Morocco to consolidate effective control over Western Sahara, in defiance of international law and the repeated calls of the UN for a process of genuine self-determination. Since its occupation of the territory in 1975, following Spain’s withdrawal and the signing of the Madrid Accords, Morocco has progressively integrated Western Sahara into its domestic legal, administrative, and constitutional framework.  

The 2011 Moroccan Constitution, for instance, explicitly defines the kingdom’s “southern provinces” as part of its national territory, codifying the annexation within its supreme law. This formal incorporation has been accompanied by the extension of Moroccan institutions, including courts, into the occupied territory, blurring the distinction between Morocco and Western Sahara in both legal and administrative terms. While it maintains some military presence, especially at the border in light of the ongoing armed conflict with the Polisario Front, Morocco has fully extended its civil law and administration to Western Sahara.  

At the same time, Morocco has pursued extensive policies of settlement and infrastructure development aimed at consolidating its control and altering the demographic and economic character of Western Sahara. Tens of thousands of Moroccan citizens have been encouraged or incentivised to relocate to Western Sahara through employment opportunities, housing subsidies, and tax advantages (Haklai, 2022). The result is that as of today, Sahrawis constitute around one fourth of the population living in Western Sahara (CJEU, Front Polisario, 2024, paras 127-128). Major infrastructure projects, such as the Dakhla Atlantic Port, new road networks linking the territory to southern Morocco, and energy developments in renewable sectors, have further integrated Western Sahara into Morocco’s national economy (Pelliconi and Kattan, 2025). These policies have not only changed the population composition of key urban centres such as Laayoune and Dakhla but have also created deep material dependencies that reinforce Moroccan authority on the ground. They established irreversible facts on the ground that the Security Council eventually has treated as a legitimate basis for political solutions, eroding the prohibition on acquiring territory through force. 

Morocco first introduced its Autonomy Plan for Western Sahara to the Security Council in April 2007 (S/2007/206, Annex), envisioning it as a self-governing region under Moroccan sovereignty, with local institutions exercising limited powers while ultimate authority over issues such as defence, foreign affairs, and monetary policy remains with the central government in Rabat. While presented by its proponents as a pragmatic and “realistic” solution to a long-standing dispute, the Plan rests fundamentally on the premise of Moroccan sovereignty over the territory. In doing so, the Plan effectively legitimises and consolidates the prolonged occupation that has persisted for nearly five decades. 

Despite these ongoing violations, the international response to Morocco’s Autonomy Proposal has shifted markedly in recent years (Allen and Trinidad, 2024). On the one hand, several countries, especially African states, have recognised the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), led by the Polisario Front, from refugee camps in Algeria. On the other hand, some of these states have since changed their position, with an increasing number of states endorsing Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the preferred framework for resolving the conflict. This accelerated during the first Trump Administration, when the U.S. formally recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara in December 2020 in exchange for Morocco’s acceptance of the “Abraham Accords” and the normalisation of relations with Israel.  

Since then, and especially with the start of the second Trump Administration, several states have followed suit, either by issuing statements of support for the Plan or by opening consulates in the occupied territory, implicitly acknowledging Moroccan authority. France declared its recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty in 2024 and the UK – without explicitly accepting sovereignty – endorsed the Autonomy Plan as the most pragmatic solution in June 2025. At that point, three out of five permanent members of the Security Council were in favour of Morocco’s position.  

The Death of Decolonisation  

This growing trend of international recognition reached a new milestone when, in October 2025, the UN Security Council itself referenced the 2007 Moroccan Autonomy Proposal as a basis for negotiating the territory’s final status. Such a move represents a retreat from the UN’s official position on Western Sahara and marks a new incoherence within the system itself, contradicting explicit previous resolutions and creating an anomalous situation for MINURSO, which is now called on to organise a façade referendum on the premise that one of the possible outcomes is to be preferred. More generally, such a move is a retreat from the UN’s foundational commitment to self-determination as enshrined in the UN Charter, General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), and the corpus of decolonisation law developed throughout the second half of the twentieth century. This has been endorsed by the principal judicial organ of the UN in multiples cases and advisory opinions, such as its celebrated opinion on the decolonisation of the Chagos Islands (ICJ, Chagos, 2019), which criticised the UK’s decision to establish a new colony in the Indian Ocean in the 1960s (the British Indian Ocean Territory) (on this long-standing dispute see Kattan, 2015, and Kattan, 2020). 

The latest endorsement by the Security Council of Morocco’s Autonomy Plan appears to reflect the geopolitical preferences of powerful states, particularly the U.S. and its allies, rather than a principled application of international law. The Security Council has been seized by the U.S.’s own foreign policy priority, with the endorsement of European powers, which have strategic and economic interests in maintaining good relationships with Morocco, especially in the lead-up to the 2030 FIFA World Cup, with many striking commercial, migration, and security cooperation partnerships. While many of the other members of the Security Council have declared that their vote should not be interpreted as a recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty, the vote passed with a clear majority of Security Council members voting in favour, and only Russia, China, and Pakistan abstained (Algeria did not vote). The choice of slipping references to the Autonomy Plan in the vote on renewing MINURSO’s mandate was also very strategic. Russia and China could not exercise their veto power without the risk of being held publicly responsible for completely quashing the extension of MINURSO’s mandate and thereby any opportunity for peace and a referendum. A similar pattern ensued with the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 on Gaza (addressed below), which Russia and China could not risk vetoing without being accused of prolonging the Gaza genocide. 

That international law and UN mechanisms (and the Security Council in particular) are often shaped by political power is not new. From its inception, the international legal order has reflected the asymmetries of the political system it was designed to regulate (Anghie, 2004; Simpson, 2004). The UN Charter’s ideal of sovereign equality among states has always coexisted uneasily with a structure that entrenches the dominance of a few powerful actors. This tension is most visible in the Security Council, whose composition and decision-making procedures institutionalise a hierarchy within the international system.  

What is deeply concerning here, however, is that the current moment appears to signal an intensification of this trend where UN mechanisms are instrumentalised to legitimise faits accomplis of territorial acquisition. The Security Council risks becoming “a mechanism for resolving disputes in ways contrary to international law” (Istrefi, 2025). Its willingness to endorse a long-standing occupation as potentially a legitimate basis for sovereignty marks a shift from condemning illegality to not only tolerating, but also normalising it. By accepting Morocco’s annexation as a “realistic” or “credible” solution, international institutions are not only converting political dominance into lawful order; they are also undermining the law itself, which prohibits the conferral of sovereignty on an occupying power (cf. ICJ advisory opinion, 2024). The Security Council is “narrowing … the decolonization regime” and “transforming a question of liberation into one of administration” (Makaza-Goede, 2025). The very institutions created to prevent the recurrence of wars of conquest and colonial subjugation (Hathaway and Shapiro, 2017) now risk legitimising their enduring outcomes.  

This erosion does not merely affect the Sahrawi people but threatens the integrity of the international legal order itself, undermining the principle that sovereignty cannot be acquired through force and prolonged occupation, and unilaterally redefining the terms of self-determination. Something similar had been done by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which in its decision of 4 October 2024 ostensibly upheld the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination but suggested that they could implicitly consent to Morocco exploiting the territory’s goods and natural resources if they receive adequate benefits (CJEU, Front Polisario, 2024). This proposed understanding is novel and arguably incompatible with international law on self-determination (Pelliconi and Odermatt, 2024). The readiness of international institutions to accept such outcomes reflects a growing realist drift in global governance, where stability and strategic alliances increasingly outweigh normative commitments. In this environment, the language of “pragmatism” and “realism” is deployed to justify the abandonment of legal principles in favour of accommodating the interests of powerful states.  

A Dangerous Precedent 

The normalisation of Morocco’s annexation sets a dangerous precedent with implications far beyond North Africa. In particular, it could pave the way for the Security Council’s eventual acceptance of other instances of prolonged occupation and territorial incorporation, including Russia’s annexation of eastern Ukraine, Turkey’s annexation of northern Cyprus, and, perhaps most acutely, Israel’s entrenchment of control over the OPTs through its ongoing settlement enterprise and apartheid and annexationist policies. Then there are those islands occupied by the militaries of the UAE in the Gulf and by the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea that seek to create fait accomplis. Already, we are seeing attempts to recognise such fait accomplis with Trump’s latest “Peace Proposal” for Ukraine, requiring its effective partition, and his earlier recognition of the Holy City of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights as parts of sovereign Israeli territory (Kattan, 2018; Kattan, 2019). And what Resolution 2797 did for Morocco — transform prolonged occupation into a Security Council–endorsed “realistic” solution — Resolution 2803 now risks doing to Gaza, albeit in more subtle, conditional language. As explained below, even though “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict”, which is annexed to Resolution 2803, states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza”, the discretion it grants to Israel to determine when “Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat” may perpetuate de facto Israeli control. 

For those statespersons who care about international law, this development should sound a profound alarm. The parallels between Morocco’s approach to Western Sahara and Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories are striking: both cases involve the systematic use of civilian settlements, integration of infrastructure, and the extension of domestic governance to gradually transform the demographic and social character of the occupied territory. Decades of settlement expansion, particularly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have fragmented Palestine’s territorial continuity and fundamentally altered the landscape envisioned under the two-state solution, evolving into a de facto and de jure annexation (Pelliconi, 2025).  

The Moroccan Berm in Western Sahara and the Israeli wall in Gaza, as well as the West Bank barrier, share significant functional and symbolic similarities in entrenching control and fragmenting the Indigenous social fabric. Both structures serve as instruments of territorial control, designed to consolidate the occupying power’s authority while restricting the movement of the Indigenous population. They physically entrench the occupation, transforming what international law regards as a temporary form of control into a semi-permanent spatial and political reality. The Berm, a series of fortified sand walls and minefields, effectively separates Moroccan-held areas from those controlled by the Polisario Front, facilitating demographic manipulation and the expansion of settlements.  

Similarly, Israel’s wall and security perimeter in Gaza isolates Palestinian Gazans from the outside world while controlling movement, restricting access, and exerting border control over the territory, air, and sea (as well as Gaza’s currency and population registry). The West Bank barrier, which was declared unlawful by the ICJ in its 2024 advisory opinion, comprising fences, walls, watchtowers, and checkpoints, enables Israel to extend administrative and security control over large swathes of territory, often encompassing settlements and fertile land, while restricting Palestinian mobility. These forms of control become entrenched psychologically, as well as materially, by the use of Israeli-issued identity cards, cameras with facial recognition technology, and drones that regularly loiter above Palestinian towns and villages, keeping a watchful eye on those below, so they know they are constantly being monitored.  

In addition, Israel’s extension of its civil and criminal laws and administrative authority to Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and more explicitly through measures taken in 2023–2025 to place settlement governance under direct civilian rather than military control (Yesh Din et al, 2024), creates a dual system that mirrors Morocco’s own strategy of normalising authority through legal incorporation. These actions blur the distinction between the occupier and the occupied, transforming the occupation into a permanent territorial and legal reality.  

The Security Council’s recent engagement with the situation in Gaza illustrates how the situation in Western Sahara may produce broader precedential effects, embracing ambiguous governance arrangements and conditional pathways to self-determination, which risks replicating the same logic of normalising annexation. The Security Council’s support for Resolution 2803 (2025), which endorses President Trump “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” includes the establishment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to disarm Hamas and oversee security in Gaza for the next two years, and the creation of a transitional authority (the “Board of Peace”), including Palestinian technocrats, to oversee the provision of aid and reconstruction in Gaza. The Board of Peace would eventually transfer power to the Palestinian Authority, but only once the board is satisfied it is capable of ruling autonomously (Burgis-Kasthala, 2025).  

According to paragraph 1 of the Trump Peace Plan, which is annexed to Resolution 2803, Gaza is destined to become “a deradicalized terror-free zone.” The use of the word “zone” is rather unexpected in a UN resolution when referencing an ancient port city and its Palestinian population of more than 2 million people that previous UN resolutions have described as being an integral part of a Palestinian state. The use of the word “zone” implies that it is a place without an identity, a non-place like a gigantic “buffer zone.” The Palestinian people, to the extent that they are even mentioned in Resolution 2803, are portrayed as civilians in need of humanitarian aid, reflecting a humanitarian approach that deprives Palestinians of agency. In fact, the word “civilians” is referenced only once in Resolution 2803 (para. 7) and does not appear in the Trump Peace Plan. Instead, the latter refers to “the people of Gaza”, an expression that strips them of their identity as Palestinians and their belonging to the Holy Land since time immemorial. This detachment also has normative implications, since it erodes the unity of Palestinians as the “people” holding the right to self-determination.  

While Russia and China abstained in the vote (as they did for the Security Council Resolution on Western Sahara), as they did not want to be accused of prolonging Palestinian suffering, other countries, including Muslim and Arab countries, supported the Resolution on Gaza, viewing it as an opportunity for genuine self-determination for the Palestinians. Even the representative of Algeria – a long-standing supporter of Sahrawi independence – expressed support for the core objectives of Resolution 2803, such as “maintaining the ceasefire and creating conditions for Palestinians to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and Statehood”, and the “complete withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces” (UN Press, 2025b).  

However, there is a risk that this arrangement could be instrumentalised through subjective determinations about Palestinian readiness for self-governance, delaying or even preventing the full transfer of authority to the Palestinian Authority. This would, in fact, align with President Trump’s earlier “Riviera Plan”, as well as with recent US-Israeli proposals to rebuild northern Gaza while temporarily maintaining Israeli control over key security and administrative functions. Trump’s 2020 “Deal of the Century” already envisaged settling Palestinians from Gaza inside Israel’s Negev, where the U.S. and Israel would establish high-tech industrial zones and residential and agricultural zones (The White House, 2020, Appendix 1).  

As mentioned, Resolution 2803 asserts clearly that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza” and provides for the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces, but with the caveat “save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat” (para. 16). This provision seems to indicate that Israel will continue to control Gaza’s borders, air space, and territorial waters, until Israel itself determines that the “threat from terror” is over. The Resolution also states that as the Plan progresses, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which [Security Council members] recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people” (para. 19).   

Yet this wording uses ambiguous language, presenting Palestinian self-determination and statehood as a hypothetical future outcome rather than a committed political trajectory. It also appears incongruous given that a majority of Security Council members have already recognised the State of Palestine (Kattan, 2025). Rather than outlining a concrete route toward a two-state solution, the Resolution speaks only of Palestinians (instead of Palestine) “coexisting peacefully” with Israel at some future point, leaving open and indeed uncertain whether genuine Palestinian independence will ever materialise under this framework. 

These conditionalities echo the same pattern observed in Western Sahara: temporary occupation is reframed as a governance problem to be managed rather than a legal violation to be remedied. By conditioning Palestinian self-governance on indeterminate security benchmarks, the Plan risks entrenching Israeli control and replicating the broader trend of normalising occupation under the guise of stability. Taken together, the Western Sahara and Gaza cases illustrate a common sequence: prolonged occupation is normalised, recast as a framework for stability, and ultimately treated as a plausible basis for sovereignty or long-term control. In both contexts, material facts on the ground are gradually transposed into political “realism” within the Security Council, generating a permissive environment for annexationist outcomes and eroding self-determination under the guise of pragmatic conflict management. 

Conclusion  

In a world shaped by unequal political, military, and economic power, it is hard to see how international law could ever be used for establishing, or even maintaining, an egalitarian world order, notwithstanding the creation of The Hague Group and other Global South initiatives to counter the West’s hegemonic erosion of self-determination.  

Just as the Security Council has effectively sidelined the 1975 ICJ advisory opinion affirming the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination in Western Sahara, it is not difficult to foresee a future in which it similarly disregards the advisory opinions concerning Israel. The 2004 ICJ advisory opinion on the legality of the Wall in Gaza is a case in point, which has largely been ignored in practice, with minimal enforcement or political consequence. More recently, the 2024 advisory opinion on Israeli settlements clearly reaffirmed that settlement activity in the occupied territories contravenes international law and undermines Palestinian self-determination (ICJ advisory opinion, 2024). This, too, to date, has been ignored.  

Yet if the UN’s most authoritative body is prepared to accommodate Morocco’s claim under the guise of realism or stability, there is a real risk that in the not-so-far-away future the Security Council could formally endorse a similar plan for Palestine. Although aspects of the Plan for Gaza may appear encouraging in some respects, the concern remains that the vagueness of the mechanism for transferring power to the Palestinian Authority and the involvement of Israel in the determination that the conditions for safety and effective self-governance have been satisfied would materially prevent that transfer of power. After all, Israel is already a patron to several armed groups in Gaza that oppose Hamas and is unlikely to cede control. Moreover, the Resolution provides that the Palestinian Authority will “take back control of Gaza” (para. 9), rather than acquire sovereignty as the government of a state in waiting. As mentioned, Palestinian self-determination and statehood are framed only as possibilities to satisfy “the aspiration of the Palestinian people” rather than a concrete objective. Considering the Western Sahara “precedent”, this leaves open the possibility for a scenario where the Palestinian territories could hold some degree of autonomy and self-governance under Israel’s sovereignty, de facto, regardless of the unequivocal findings of the ICJ that this scenario would be patently unlawful (ICJ advisory opinion, 2024).  

The normalisation of such practices would further erode the normative distinction between lawful self-determination and coercive annexation, effectively hollowing out the international legal prohibitions that emerged after World War II to prevent territorial conquest. The erosion of the principle of self-determination in one case weakens it everywhere, reducing it from a binding legal right to a negotiable political preference. Unless these trends are reversed, sovereign equality and the illegality of conquest may well give way to a new order in which occupation becomes indistinguishable from conquest, redefining what the “international community” is willing to accept as lawful. Such an outcome, if it is not resisted, would mark the functional death of the right to self-determination that was ushered in during the UN era of decolonisation.  

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Further Reading on E-International Relations