Annexation of Western Sahara in the context of "Void (law)"

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About two-thirds of Western Sahara, a UN-designated non-self-governing territory in the Maghreb, has been occupied by Morocco since 1975 amid the Western Sahara War. It was illegally annexed by Morocco in two stages in 1976 and 1979. The occupied territories are administered as integral parts of Morocco, and state-sponsored settlement programs exist to relocate Moroccans to Western Sahara.

The Morocco–Western Sahara border is 444 kilometres (276 mi) in length and runs from Atlantic Ocean in the west, to the tripoint with Algeria in the east. The border has existed purely in a de jure sense since Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara in 1976–1979.

The Western Sahara conflict is an ongoing conflict between the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and the Kingdom of Morocco. The conflict originated from an insurgency by the Polisario Front against Spanish colonial forces from 1973 to 1975 and the subsequent Western Sahara War against Morocco between 1975 and 1991. 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.

The conflict escalated after the withdrawal of Spain from the Spanish Sahara in accordance with the Madrid Accords. Beginning in 1975, the Polisario Front, backed and supported by Algeria, waged a 16-year-long war for independence against Mauritania and Morocco. 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. In 1977, France intervened as the conflict reached its peak intensity. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict and territories, leading to a stalemate through most of the 1980s. The Polisario Front and the Moroccan government reached a cease-fire agreement after several more engagements between 1989 and 1991. At the time, most of the Western Sahara remained under Moroccan control, while the Polisario controlled some 30% of the territory in its capacity as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. At present, these borders are largely unchanged.