Rabat – The Trump administration has announced plans to review peacekeeping forces, including MINURSO, which operates in Morocco’s southern provinces in Western Sahara.
“We’re looking at a strategic review of the peacekeeping force in Western Sahara that has been there for 50 years,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said on Friday.
The US strategy seeks to ensure that peacekeeping operations do not continue “indefinitely” without results.
Waltz says the decision aims to streamline costly UN operations. He recalled the closure of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a move expected to save $87 million annually, adding that efforts to end the special political mission in Yemen are projected to save $25 million per year.
The US pledges come ahead of the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) April session on Western Sahara.
In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally announced plans to dismantle what Washington describes as “costly and ineffective” UN peacekeeping missions worldwide.
Rubio said the US decision aims to “lead efforts to wind down costly and ineffective peacekeeping and special political missions around the world.”
The US also pledged that the strategy is part of promoting a US-led peace process, blocking resolutions that “undermine US interests or those of our allies.”
The move is part of larger efforts by the Trump administration to cut down on international NGOs and global support missions as part of the president’s nationalist “America First” strategy.
The desire for downscaling MINURSO comes as various reports highlight how the peacekeeping mission “failed” to deliver on its mandate.
Atlantic Council analyst Sarah Zaaimi wrote in April last year that MINURSO “only served to maintain a state of paralysis throughout the year.”
“For the past thirty-four years, MINURSO has consistently deceived the Sahrawi people by failing to deliver on its mission,” she said, urging Washington to “defund, dismantle, and terminate it.”
Many other observers now consider MINURSO’s mandate obsolete, citing developments in the Sahara dossier and the growing international support for Morocco’s Autonomy Plan as the only viable political framework to resolve the dispute.
The US also aligns with this position, and continues to facilitate talks between the parties to the dispute to engage them within the autonomy framework to reach a mutually acceptable and politically agreed-upon solution.
