The endorsement of a purposeful normative framework in international recognition of territorial sovereign rights: the case of Moroccan sahara
Dr Reda El Fellah
The performance of Moroccan diplomacy regarding the Moroccan Sahara issue have shifted from shaping objectives linked to the withdrawal of recognition from the separatist entity called “Polisario” by the largest number of States, to bolder and more ambitious goals, directed to gain explicit or implicit recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over its southern territories.
Morocco’s consular diplomacy since December 2019 has been a qualitative leap forward in a step-by-step strategy towards gaining international recognition of the Moroccan sovereignty over its Southern regions. In this context, the explicit recognition of the United States on December, 10, 2020 marked a decisive moment in the path towards the political settlement of the conflict, based on the growing international acknowledgment that the autonomy plan for the Sahara proposed by the Kingdom of Morocco in 2007 should be a “single basis for a just and lasting solution to the conflict”.
This leads us to question the legal and political dimensions that overlap with the existence or lack of recognition in general, highlighting the legal dimension in order to strengthen the normative function of recognition of sovereign territorial rights. The responses will be applied to the international recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over its southern territories, with all the resulting opportunities for a political settlement at the UN level.
This paper will use the content analysis method and the discourse analysis method as a qualitative methods in order to capture the nature and forms of international recognition of sovereign rights and its legal implications. A prospective approach will be adopted by projecting the results of the analysis on the artificial conflict of Moroccan Sahara. The case of Morocco sets the legal criteria for the endorsement of a purposeful normative framework in international recognition of territorial sovereign rights