AI overview
Western Sahara is a territory in North and West Africa whose political status remains disputed, with Morocco claiming control while a separatist movement and some countries recognize it as an independent state. The territory matters because this ongoing conflict affects regional stability in North Africa and involves questions of self-determination and territorial sovereignty that remain unresolved by the international community.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- occupied territory
- Part of
- North Africa
- Official name
- Sahara occidental
- Demonym
- Sahrawi
- Country
- Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (from 1976)
- Continent
- Africa
- Currency
- Sahrawi peseta (from 1991)
- Population
- +612000 (2021)
- Area
- +266000 (2016)
- Elevation
- +237
Article
Western Sahara is a United Nations–designated non-self-governing territory in north-western Africa. It has a surface area of 272,000 square kilometres (105,000 sq mi). Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been dubbed "Africa's last colony". With an estimated population of around 600,000 inhabitants, it is the most sparsely populated territory in Africa and the second most sparsely populated territory in the world after Greenland, consisting mainly of desert flatlands.
Francoist Spain previously colonized the territory as the Spanish Sahara until 1975, when the Spanish transition to democracy took effect. In 1976, when Spain attempted to transfer its administration to Morocco and Mauritania while ignoring a verdict of the International Court of Justice that those countries had no sovereignty over Western Sahara, a war erupted and the Polisario Front—a national liberation movement recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate representative of the people of Western Sahara—proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) with a government-in-exile in Tindouf, Algeria. Mauritania withdrew its claims in 1979, and Morocco secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all major cities and most natural resources. A UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement was reached in 1991, though a planned referendum monitored by the UN's MINURSO mission has since stalled.