The Green March: How Morocco Spun a Court Ruling Against It Into a Land Claim

By 1975, Spain’s colonial hold on Western Sahara, a sparsely populated desert territory on Africa’s northwest coast, was crumbling under pressure from the Sahrawi independence movement and from Morocco and Mauritania, both of which claimed historical rights to the territory as Spain prepared to leave. Morocco brought its case to the International Court of Justice, seeking a ruling that would validate its sovereignty claim before Spain’s withdrawal could hand the territory to Sahrawi self-rule instead.

The ICJ’s advisory opinion, issued October 16, 1975, did not give Morocco what it wanted. The Court found that Western Sahara had not been terra nullius, unclaimed territory, at the time of Spanish colonization, and that historical ties of allegiance had existed between the Sultan of Morocco and some, though not all, of the region’s Sahrawi tribes. Critically, it went on to conclude that none of those historical ties amounted to ties of territorial sovereignty, and that they could not override the Sahrawi population’s right to self-determination under United Nations decolonization principles, a ruling that on balance favored Sahrawi independence over Moroccan annexation. King Hassan II addressed the nation that same night, citing the Court’s acknowledgment of historical ties while leaving out its actual conclusion, and declared that “the right has prevailed over injustice.” He announced he would lead a mass civilian march to reclaim Western Sahara for Morocco.

On November 6, 1975, roughly 350,000 Moroccan civilians, reportedly including some 50,000 women and thousands of Moroccan troops embedded among them in civilian dress, crossed into Western Sahara at the border point of Tah, carrying Moroccan flags, portraits of the king, and copies of the Quran. Spanish forces, unwilling to fire on an unarmed civilian procession of that scale, held their positions rather than resist, and the marchers advanced roughly ten kilometers before halting at a line of Spanish defensive minefields. Four days later, Hassan II declared the march a success and ordered a withdrawal, which was substantially complete by November 18. Behind the scenes, the march had done its intended work as diplomatic leverage: on November 14, 1975, Spain, Morocco, and Mauritania signed the Madrid Accords, under which Spain would withdraw and the territory would be divided between Morocco, which took the northern two-thirds including the town of El Aaiún, and Mauritania, which took the southern third. Mauritania abandoned its claim in 1979 under military pressure from the Sahrawi independence movement, and Morocco moved to annex that remaining portion as well, an occupation whose legal status under international law remains disputed to this day, exactly the question the 1975 ICJ ruling had been asked, and had largely declined, to settle in Morocco’s favor.