United Nations visiting mission to Spanish Sahara

To assist in the decolonization process of the Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), a colony in North Africa, the United Nations General Assembly in 1975 dispatched a visiting mission to the territory and the surrounding countries, in accordance with its resolution 3292 (December 13, 1974).

The mission intended to investigate the political situation in the Spanish Sahara, as well as the conflicting claims to the territory:

The mission was composed of three members. Its head was Simeon Aké, UN ambassador of the Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast); accompanying him were Marta Jiménez Martinez, a Cuban diplomat, and Manouchehr Pishva, from Iran.

It toured Spanish Sahara on May 12–19, 1975, after initially having been denied entry by Spanish authorities. On May 8–12 and again on May 20–22, it visited Madrid, Spain; and from May 28 to June 1, it toured the neighbouring countries Mauritania, Morocco and Algeria; in Algeria - which supported the Polisario since late 1974 - it also met with leaders of the Polisario Front.

In the territory, the mission encountered opposing demonstrations by the Polisario Front and the PUNS, both demanding independence, but differing in their approach to the Spanish authorities. Tony Hodges writes:

The mission estimated the largest demonstration they witnessed, "organized by the Frente Polisario", in El-Aaiun on May 13, 1975, to have consisted of 15,000 people - significant, since a 1974 census by the Spanish authorities had set the total population at just below 75,000 people.

The mission presented its report to the United Nations on October 15, 1975. The results of the investigation were cited especially by the Polisario Front and its Algerian backers as supportive of their argument, but the debate was largely submerged by the presentation of the opinion of the International Court of Justice on October 16. The court argued that while there were historical ties between both Mauritania and Morocco to the tribes and lands of Spanish Sahara, neither country's claim sufficed to grant it ownership of the territory. The court also ruled that the Sahrawis possessed a right of self-determination, meaning that any solution to the problem of the status of Spanish Sahara had to be approved by the Sahrawi public. (A position regarded as supportive of the referendum.) As a response to the ICJ verdict, King Hassan II of Morocco announced within hours of the release of the court's findings, that he would organize a Green March into Spanish Sahara to assume ownership of the territory.

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Wikipedia