The United Nations began liquidating MINURSO, its Western Sahara peace mission, on November 1 after the Security Council failed to renew the mandate that had kept it operating for decades. The move matters because MINURSO was the UN mission tasked with monitoring the ceasefire and preparing a referendum on the territory’s future.

What the UN is doing now

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said the first day of November marked the start of the liquidation phase. Under that process, a small team will oversee the orderly transfer of property belonging to countries that contributed to the mission and the disposal of UN equipment.

The mission stopped operating after its mandate was not renewed. The UN has not given a timetable for how long the liquidation will take, or said what, if anything, will replace MINURSO’s monitoring role on the ground.

MINURSO was created in 1991 to monitor a ceasefire and prepare a referendum on Western Sahara’s future. That vote has never been held. In a UN report cited by the sources, the mission had 155 military personnel and was budgeted at $62 million for the fiscal year that began in June.

How the Council deadlock unfolded

The mandate expired after the Security Council rejected competing draft resolutions on Friday. Russia vetoed the US-drafted text, even though 11 of the 15 council members backed it, including France and the United Kingdom. Washington’s proposal would have extended the mission for a year, changed its name, and tied further talks to Morocco’s autonomy plan, according to the sources.

Russia then put forward its own draft to keep the existing mission in place without those changes, but that text also failed. It received two votes in favour, one against and 11 abstentions, short of the nine votes needed for adoption.

One Spanish report described the US draft differently, saying it would have ended the peacekeeping mission on April 30, 2027 and replaced it with a political mission. The sources do not reconcile those versions, but they agree on the result: no new mandate was approved.

Why the ending matters

Morocco said the failure to renew MINURSO was a significant step and argued that UN personnel and equipment should leave the territory in the coming days. Rabat also said the Western Sahara issue should be removed from the Security Council’s agenda.

Algeria said it regretted the failure to extend the mandate and criticised the US draft as excessively biased toward Morocco. Sidi Omar, the Polisario Front’s representative at the UN, welcomed Russia’s veto and said the US proposal would undermine Sahrawi self-determination.

Guterres urged the parties to cooperate fully with the orderly liquidation process and said he was concerned about security across the territory and the risk of renewed hostilities. The UN has said it remains committed to supporting a political solution that is just, durable and acceptable to both sides.