MINURSO - United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara: Peace Operation Stalled in the Desert, 1991-2021
Janos BesenyoOne key element of the 1991 agreement was that a UN supervised referendum would be conducted to determine the future of Western Sahara. To that end MINURSO (Mission des Nations Unies pour l'Organisation d'un Référendum au Sahara Occidental) was created to oversee the ceasefire and organize the referendum. Over 30 years later, however, that referendum has still not taken place despite the original agreement and the involvement of some of the late twentieth century’s leading diplomats, and contrary to its previous promises, Morocco is only willing to grant a “high degree of autonomy” in the occupied Western Sahara. The Sahrawis and Polisario refuse to accept this, thus the conflict remains unresolved and ever on the brink of reigniting.
The author of the book, János Besenyő, a professor at Óbuda University in Budapest, Hungary, and who served as a peacekeeper in MINURSO, presents the history of the area, the path leading to the creation of the mission, and its operation over the past three decades, and provides a detailed description of the mission’s team sites and the opposing forces of the Polisario and Morocco.