‘They’re our resources!’ A new frame in the struggle for the liberation of the Sahrawi people

The nationalist claims spearheaded by the Polisario Front in Western Sahara consolidate the bulk of the local Sahrawi demands and act as a reference point for the abstract principles that underpin the struggle for the liberation of colonised peoples. However, as the years have passed in this ongoing conflict, the framing of these claims has evolved. While the movement of the 1990s and early 2000s prioritised the rhetoric of human rights, albeit without forsaking the core question of self-determination, new claims related to improving living conditions have gradually developed in the different Sahrawi spaces, allowing for a shift from the global frame of human rights to a frame related to the rights of people to dispose of their resources. The decision made by the Polisario Front to litigate the trade agreements between the European Union and Morocco in 2012 signalled the validation of this new frame in terms of a national and anticolonial struggle.