While the world’s attention has understandably been focussed on events in Ukraine and Gaza, the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Morocco saw Britain seize the initiative on a diplomatic issue that has been neglected by the international community for nearly half a century; that of the status of Western Sahara, under administration by Morocco since 1975, but whose sovereignty over the region has been disputed by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, sometimes violently, for decades. This example of British diplomatic engagement is particularly significant in the context of the new Strategic Defence Review, and the British Government’s stated aim of enhancing national security through economic growth.
This vast territory of more than 100,000 square miles is home to 565,000 people – a population roughly the size of Leeds, spread across an area bigger than the United Kingdom, although largely concentrated in the town of Laayoune, the regional capital, and Dakhla, the largest and fastest growing container port on the east Atlantic coast. Morocco has invested heavily and imaginatively in the Western Sahara, providing tens of thousands of new jobs, and the prospect of many more to come, yet its full economic development has been held back by a frozen territorial dispute, which has contributed to a deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria.
While the world’s attention has understandably been focussed on events in Ukraine and Gaza, the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Morocco saw Britain seize the initiative on a diplomatic issue that has been neglected by the international community for nearly half a century; that of the status of Western Sahara, under administration by Morocco since 1975, but whose sovereignty over the region has been disputed by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front, sometimes violently, for decades. This example of British diplomatic engagement is particularly significant in the context of the new Strategic Defence Review, and the British Government’s stated aim of enhancing national security through economic growth.
This vast territory of more than 100,000 square miles is home to 565,000 people – a population roughly the size of Leeds, spread across an area bigger than the United Kingdom, although largely concentrated in the town of Laayoune, the regional capital, and Dakhla, the largest and fastest growing container port on the east Atlantic coast. Morocco has invested heavily and imaginatively in the Western Sahara, providing tens of thousands of new jobs, and the prospect of many more to come, yet its full economic development has been held back by a frozen territorial dispute, which has contributed to a deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Tindouf refugee camps in Algeria.