Western Sahara
- Languages: Arabic
- Government: 20% of the territory is a self-proclaimed Republic, known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic; the remaining 80% is controlled by Morocco
- Currency: Moroccan dirham, Sahrawi peseta.
- Western Sahara is a long-disputed territory of 266,000 sq km with a population of 612,000 in the Maghreb region of North and West Africa, which borders the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest, Morocco to the north-northeast, Algeria to the east-northeast, and Mauritania to the east and south.
- After an initial interest in the region, Spain colonized the territory and proclaimed it as Spanish Sahara. Just a year after gaining independence in 1956, Morocco started claiming the territory which was still under Spanish influence, as well as Mauritania, which started claiming territories in the early 1960s. By 1975, whilst the Algerian government asked for full independence of Western Sahara with a United Nations-led intervention, the Spanish government declared its withdrawal from the occupied territories, ceding them to Morocco and Mauritania. From 1975 onwards, fighting and guerrillas between the Sahrawi forces and Morocco began.
- In 1988, the United Nations gave resolutions for a peace agreement, giving people the option to vote for a referendum of independence, making them choose between the Polisario Front or the Moroccan control. After a ceasefire had been signed in 1991, Morocco began to take more control of the region which led to numerous refusals of many UN peace proposals.
- During the early 2020s, the United States became the first country to declare Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara region, whilst the territory still remains on the UN list of Non-Self Governing countries since 1963.
