Last time we checked in on Western Sahara, occupied illegally by Morocco since 1975, demonstrations were taking place to protest against the decision by the UN security council, at the end of April, not to give a human rights role to MINURSO, the UN monitoring group for the territory.
The US had initially proposed enabling MINURSO to monitor human rights (like every other UN mission around the world), but withdrew after strong Moroccan protests.
In May, Western Sahara saw over a thousand people taking to the streets in what may have been the largest demo since the occupation began – triggering a Moroccan crackdown.
It’s possible that these events led to a rare article in the mainstream US press in July, with the Washington Post interviewing ‘the Sahrawi Gandhi’, Aminatou Haidar, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She told the Post: ‘This is a pride for us, that this [movement for independence] is led by women’.