Law, dignity and the cost of silence

For half a century, Sahrawis have struggled to exist, to be recognised and to retain dignity under conditions that international law defines as unfinished decolonisation

- Mohamed Elbaikam

Injustice: Within Western Sahara, Sahrawis have been targeted for raising a flag, participating in a demonstration or asserting an identity. Photo: Michele Benericetti/Wikimedia Commons

(Michele Benericetti Wikimedia Commons)

Fifty years after the conflict over Western Sahara began, the Sahrawi experience represents far more than an unresolved political dispute.

It is a prolonged human story of displacement, repression, legal limbo and moral endurance — one that continues to test the credibility of international law and the ethical coherence of the global order.

This is not an argument on behalf of any political organisation. It is an examination of a people’s struggle to exist, to be recognised and to retain dignity under conditions that international law itself defines as unfinished decolonisation.

Public debate often reduces the Sahrawi cause to a brief period of armed confrontation in the late 20th century.

This framing is misleading. The essence of the Sahrawi struggle has not been military, but civic, legal and human.

For half a century, Sahrawis have lived with the consequences of a conflict that never reached resolution: forced displacement, prolonged exile, political repression and the suspension of a promised act of self-determination.

Since 1975, tens of thousands of Sahrawis have lived as refugees in camps in southwestern Algeria — among the longest-standing refugee situations in the world. Entire generations have been born and raised without having seen their homeland.

Alongside them exists a broader Sahrawi diaspora across North Africa, Europe and beyond, shaped not by voluntary migration but by the enduring absence of a political solution.