Today the conflict is dominated by unarmed civil campaigns of the Polisario Front and their self-proclaimed SADR state to gain fully recognized independence for Western Sahara.

In February 1976, the Polisario Front declared the establishment of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which was not admitted into the United Nations, but won limited recognition by a number of other states.

Following the annexation of Western Sahara by Morocco and Mauritania in 1976, and the Polisario Front's declaration of independence, the UN addressed the conflict via a resolution reaffirming the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.

Despite multiple peace initiatives through the 1990s and early 2000s, the conflict reemerged as the "Independence Intifada" in 2005; a series of disturbances, demonstrations and riots, which broke out in May 2005 in the Moroccan-held portions of Western Sahara, and lasted until November of that same year.

In 1958, Spain merged the previously separate districts of Saguia el-Hamra (in the north) and Río de Oro (in the south) to form the province of Spanish Sahara.

After the events of the Zemla Intifada in 1970, when Spanish police forcibly disbanded the organization and "disappeared" its founder, Muhammad Bassiri, Sahrawi nationalism again swung towards militarism.

In 1971, a group of young Sahrawi students in the universities of Morocco began organizing what came to be known as The Embryonic Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Rio de Oro.

[20] After attempting in vain to gain backing from several Arab governments, including both Algeria and Morocco itself, the movement only succeeded in obtaining support from Libya and Mauritania.

On 20 May he led the Khanga raid, the Polisario's first armed action,[25] in which a Spanish post manned by a team of Tropas Nomadas (Sahrawi-staffed auxiliary forces) was overrun and a cache of rifles seized.

The Polisario Front, backed by Algeria and Libya, desiring instead the establishment an independent Sahrawi state in the territory, fought both Mauritania and Morocco in quick succession, in an attempt to drive their forces out of the region.

Morocco's position is that Algeria is part of the conflict and uses the Sahara issue for geopolitical interests that date from the Cold War, claiming that this country in its official communication to the United Nations "presents itself sometimes as 'a concerned party,' other times as an 'important actor,' or as a 'party' in the settlement of the dispute".

[35] In an interview with the Public Broadcasting Service, in August 2004, James Baker, former personal envoy of the United Nations Secretary to Western Sahara, identified Morocco and Algeria as being both the "two chief protagonists" of the conflict.

In response to the Green March and the ongoing disputed status of Western Sahara, Algeria has expropriated the property of and forcibly expelled tens of thousands of Moroccan civilians since 1975.

[34] In 2011, Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jiménez called for a U.N. committee to evaluate the security situation in the Polisario-controlled refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria) and probe possible corruption in the distribution of international aid there.

[47] The statement by Jiménez came two days after two Spanish aid workers and one Italian were kidnapped by suspected al-Qaeda members in Tindouf, which is under the control of Polisario Front, which seeks the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco.

Unlike the Organization of African Unity which has strongly backed Western Sahara's right to self-determination, the Arab League has shown little interest in the area.

[59] Although the Polisario Front was not involved in the negotiations, the SFPA explicitly allows for European Vessels to fish in the disputed coast of the Western Sahara territory.

The NGO Human Rights Watch penned a letter to European Members of Parliament seeking a vote against the proposition, arguing that Morocco has no legal basis to make agreements regarding a disputed territory and is thus illegal under international law.

After the passing of the agreement a petition signed by leading Saharawi activist organizations in the region was penned to the EU condemning the decision,[61] and the Polisario Front announced it will challenge the vote in the European Court of Justice stating it was in clear violation of international law.

[64] In April 2013, the United States proposed that MINURSO monitored human rights (as all the other UN mission since 1991) in Western Sahara, a move that Morocco strongly opposed, cancelling the annual African Lion military exercises with U.S. Army troops.

The referendum, originally scheduled for 1992, was intended to give the local population of Western Sahara the option between independence or affirming integration with Morocco, but it quickly stalled.

By 1999 the UN had identified about 85,000 voters, with nearly half of them in the Moroccan-controlled parts of Western Sahara or Southern Morocco, and the others scattered between the Tindouf refugee camps, Mauritania and other locations throughout the world.

Citing the Spanish approach to regional autonomy, the Moroccan government plans to model any future agreement after the cases of the Canary Islands, Basque Country, Andalusia or Catalonia.

[73] On 30 April 2007, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1754, which both urged the involved parties to "enter into direct negotiations without preconditions and in good faith."

In 2018 the United Nations Security Counsel announced that peace talks regarding the Western Sahara territory would resume and delegates of the Polisario Front, Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania would all be present.

[96] The protests began as celebrations for Algeria's win in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, and eventually escalated into demonstrations for Sahrawi self-determination and clashes with Moroccan security forces.

On 4 December 2018 Moroccan forces arrested Nezha El Khalidi under Article 381 for live-streaming a Sahrawi protest and subsequently failing to meet the qualifications of a journalist.

Moroccan authorities rebutted the condemnation saying Al-Batal had crashed into a police car and resisted arrest, however these claims were disputed in an investigation on the incident published by The Washington Post.

Human Rights Watch called for the release of the political prisoners reporting that they had been held in harsh conditions and tortured to sign confessions, a direct violation of international law.

[103] In the 2020 World Press Freedom Rankings reported on the treatment of journalists and independent media outlets in Morocco and Western Sahara rating it 133rd out of 180 countries.