Talk:Sahrawi nationality law

For the sheer novelty value, where is the actual law ?

Insofar as I would like to be convinced this is not merely a rather extended blowing on about Polisario proposals in the back and forth negotiations (in which case this merits one brief paragraph perhaps under one of the excessive number of other pages on this bloody patch of desert. Such as legal status, for example. Now if this is in fact a discussion of nationality / citizenship issues for the Western Sahara (as Sahraoui is not synonymous with Polisario, if one is taking a NPOV writing....), it should include discussion of Moroccan nationality law as well, and the overall status. In sum, either the title is wrong or the content is wrong. (collounsbury (talk) 00:22, 21 August 2008 (UTC))

Article changes

M.Bitton As stated above by Collounsbury there is no law defining nationality or citizenship for Western Sahara. If you had read the article I wrote, cited by numerous experts, which you could not have done in the 1 minute that lapsed from my posting and you reverting it, the situation that there is no law would be obvious. Please provide sources which confirm that such a law exists, or restore the previous version. SusunW (talk) 18:04, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

You're pinging someone who left a comment 14 years ago. Anyway, this is not about Western Sahara, it's about SADR and its constitution (already provided in the article). M.Bitton (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

M.Bitton Regardless of the comment being made 1, 2 or 20 years ago, it was a valid question and my research into the topic confirmed that the version you restored is incorrect. The Constitution of the SADR as verified by experts does not define nationals, citizens, nor the laws that govern those functions. The version you restored references the 1999 constitution, which is not the current constitution; but neither indicate such laws exist, as both merely state that those laws can be drafted. Further, as there is no sovereignty over Western Sahara, no political entity has the right to determine who nationals or citizens are, as my version showed, until the dispute is resolved. SusunW (talk) 18:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The age of the constitution is irrelevant so long as it hasn't changed (check out the Constitution of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic for more details). You do realize that they have their own passports, don't you? M.Bitton (talk) 18:24, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

M.Bitton a discussion of the issuance of passports was in the article I wrote about the legal basis for Sahrawi nationality and citizenship. However, that being said, issuance of a passport does not grant nationality, and as SADR is not fully recognized, its passport is not universally accepted. This article is about law in a series of articles specifically about nationality. Any analysis of the situation of Western Sahara makes clear that Spain abandoned its territory and because no state succession was defined, sovereignty over the territory remains unresolved, meaning the legal situation is also unclear and a NPOV article on the legal situation must cover all aspects of the historic and current situation, not as you suggest a small fraction of the displaced population and a document which does not provide legal nationality or define who are citizens. SusunW (talk) 18:39, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Yet again, you missed the point: this article is about SADR. Whether it's fully recognized or not is irrelevant to the fact that it has its own constitution. M.Bitton (talk) 18:43, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

M.Bitton I am not missing the point. The constitution of the SADR does not define nationality. It does not define under law who is entitled to have nationality, which it cannot because it is not a sovereign state. It does not define who is entitled to the rights and obligations of citizenship. There is no legislation which has been passed by the SADR that would qualify as a nationality law, thus an article stating that such a thing exists is POV and does not conform to WP policy nor the information provided by reliable sources. SusunW (talk) 18:55, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't define most, if not all, of what is mentioned in it in details, but that doesn't mean anything. What matters is the fact that it mentions them. Anyway, I will ping (ping|Bearcat|JECE}}), since they have edited the article in the last few months and see what they have to say. M.Bitton (talk) 19:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I'd also point out the article per the project inclusion above, not added by me, is about Western Sahara, not about the SADR, which would conform to the nature of the series of articles on nationality law. SusunW (talk) 19:11, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

The article is clearly about SADR, whose link to Western Sahara is quite obvious (hence the project). Anyway, let's wait and see. M.Bitton (talk) 19:16, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

SADR is not sovereign and has no defined law. It is no more authorized to speak for the entire territory or Sahrawi people than Morocco or any other nation is, as RS confirm. @Bearcat and JECE: please see above discussion. M.Bitton noted they pinged you but formatting was incorrect and I see no messages on either of your talk pages from them asking you to evaluate this situation. SusunW (talk) 19:21, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

SADR is sovereign, has its own laws and is a full member of the AU. As for who is authorized to speak for the Sahrawi: the Polisario is recognized by the UN as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people. Sadly, once again, you're still confusing the territory that is under SADR's control with the territory it claims. M.Bitton (talk) 19:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Your interpretation does not conform with RS. SADR recognized as having a right to self-determination and having some attributes of statehood. Even the constitution recognizes that it does not have full sovereignty over the territory it claims, i.e. "Until the achievement of national sovereignty"page 14 and "Article 32: Until the complete recovery of national sovereignty" page 4. As for your assertion that the UN recognizes SADR sovereignty, Bronwen Manby states "The legal status of the Western Sahara territory is highly unusual. Unlike other UN-listed 'non-self-governing territories' there is no recognised administering power, since Spain has withdrawn itself from that role. Moroccan administration is not recognised by the UN; but the SADR's claim to sovereignty is also not recognised, while the Polisario has no form of UN recognition." page 25. Can you provide reliable sources for your statement? SusunW (talk) 19:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Again, you keep banging on about what it claims (this is tiring). The sources are in the lead of the Polisario Front. I'll await the pinged editors' comments. I'm done here. M.Bitton (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that I insist that an article about law cite sources and discuss the law that exists, or in this case that does not exist. I am quite happy to wait for others to evaluate the actual legal situation as it exists in the territory and upon the people. SusunW (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

If your statement above "about what it claims" is referring to the territory, then yes, I also insist that the entire territory be included. To be sovereign, a decolonized state must be able to control the borders of a state that conforms with the principle of uti possidetis juris, have a defined permanent population and a government that other nations can negotiate with.[1][2] SADR controls 15% of the former state, has not defined or been able to agree upon who belongs to that state and many of them are refugees, and is unrecognized by the majority of other nations that exist. I will concede that it has formed a government, but the not other aspects required. Since nationality is by definition governed by international law, who belongs to a state and their relationship to that state,[3] without sovereignty, SADR can only define its members, not those who belong to a nation. SusunW (talk) 21:23, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

This is a rather tendentious discussion. A constitution is modified by statute. Full stop. Thus @SusunW:'s citations and reliable sources are appropriate. It appears that there was well-researched material added that was summarily reverted. It needs to be restored. Montanabw^(talk) 21:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll note that my edit history in this article is not substantive, but I am familiar with the subject matter. SusunW, I haven't reviewed your edits on the article itself, but your statements in this talk page sound like you are not familiar with the background of the Western Sahara dispute.

As M.Bitton mentioned, the Saharawi Republic is a sovereign country that is a full member of the African Union and participates in international bodies accordingly, so it satisfies the constitutive theory of statehood. The Saharawi Republic directly administers a vast, sparsely populated region of Western Sahara (known as the Liberated Territories) that is beyond Moroccan control (thereby satisfying the Montevideo Convention's declarative theory of statehood), and the republic is additionally the only government-in-exile in the world that administers the refugee camps of its own population in exile. Large parts of the Saharawi constitution are suspended, true, but that doesn't mean that there is no nationality. Would you argue that the Republic of China has no nationality law because its constitution is also largely suspended? That the nationality law probably hasn't been drafted is already mentioned in the article.

As for Saharawi nationality in a broader sense, including Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, I'd argue that it also exists under international law as a very specific form of statelessness. As M.Bitton has also said, the Frente POLISARIO is recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate representative of the Saharawi people. As reiterated by the United Nations, ICJ and European courts time and again, there is an undefined Saharawi people with its own right under international law to self-determination. This just happened again four months ago [4], when a European court annulled a trade deal with Morocco because "the people of the Western Sahara" weren't consulted. In the broad sense, Saharawi nationality is also a very real legal question because it is a key way of framing who will get to vote in the promised referendum on self-determination. Whether Saharawi nationality in the broad sense belongs in this article or not is another question.

--JECE (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

JECE Perhaps you should read what I wrote [5], as M.Bitton clearly did not in the 1 minute it existed, and then we can have a reasonable discussion over the material. I am very familiar with the issues surrounding Western Sahara. If you'll pardon my confusion, how can you state that I am not, when you admit you haven't even read what I wrote? (I have not evaluated the situation for the Republic of China yet and thus cannot comment on whether they have legally defined nationals or territory. I will get to Asia, but first must finish Africa.) SusunW (talk) 22:23, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@SusunW: Perhaps you should refrain from making baseless assumptions about others. I have read the article that you made up (which existed for much longer than you claim). What prompted it was your undiscussed page move. M.Bitton (talk) 22:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

SusunW: To answer your question, and as I already explained above, it was your statements on this talk page that make it sound like you are not familiar with the subject matter. I then proceeded to take time out of my day to try and respond to some of the statements that I perceived to be incorrect. If we can't agree on the basic facts, why would you think that it's okay to delete an entire article and replace it with a completely different article? Did you actually replace one article with a completely different one, by the way? I didn't actually understand that when I wrote my first reply. --JECE (talk) 22:53, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

M.Bitton, no information changed until 11:51 and you reverted the material at 11:56, so you are correct. It existed for 5 minutes. I apologize for having misstated the time. While that would be insufficient time for most people to have read or reviewed the material in the article, if you say you did, I take you at your word. I did not "make up" the material. Everything that is in what I wrote is confirmed in at least one or more RS. As no one owns a WP article, there is no need to discuss a page move unless it is contested. You have done that, so when others have actually read the material and commented, we'll see where it goes. JECE, yes I rewrote the entire article, as what is in the article is 1) mostly uncited or cited to primary documents and 2) is asserting a claim that a law exists which does not exist. Please read the article that I wrote. It comprehensively evaluates both the historical legal right to nationality and what currently exists. SusunW (talk) 23:05, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@SusunW: What's the point of continuing this discussion when someone who brought absolutely nothing of value to it decides to force their favourite version upon those who disagree with it? M.Bitton (talk) 23:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

I just incorporated the old and the new material. I did not put in everything Susan did, as some material was a general overview, but I carefully examined the content and restored what specifically addressed the question of nationality and citizenship. Susun's edits took this article from a start class article with six references to an extensively-cited, well researched, scholarly work. I suggest that everyone leave the new version as is until you have had time to read it all through. My reorganization and various section titles may need to be changed a bit, but I put in most of the researched material verbatim as Susun drafted it with only minor grammatical tweaks. It looks to me like we have an ownership problem. Montanabw^(talk) 23:13, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

In other words, apart from shoving your preferred version down people's throat, your one and only contribution to this discussion consists of "accusing others" of article ownership. M.Bitton (talk) 23:31, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

M.Bitton, the applicable policy here is WP:BRD. The discussion part is ongoing, but I suggest you actually LOOK at what is now in there and see if it works. Some of the uncited material in there is now cited. Cease your personal attacks. If you have a specific beef with the new content, please outline it with specificity. Focus on the content, please. Montanabw^(talk) 00:01, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Montanabw: Who is accusing the others of article ownership and tendentious editing? You are, so don't you dare accuse me of personal attack on top of that. M.Bitton (talk) 00:03, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

A statement such as "someone who brought absolutely nothing of value" is not contributing to the discussion. That is "ownership" not stewardship.. Now please go read the new material Susun added to the article and let's focus on content. If there are errors, then a review of sources and appropriate improvements are valued and welcomed. That said, I will be signing off WP for a while, so probably won't get back on this until tomorrow. Montanabw^(talk) 00:24, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Montanabw, you've improved the "History" section significantly by deleting incorrect statements (particularly the references to Moroccan nationality under Spanish rule, to Spanish Ifni and to the Tekna Zone), but I think that there is still quite a bit more work to do. For one, Mauritania didn't just renounce its claim to the area, but actually recognized the Saharawi Republic's claim to all of Western Sahara. The references to the referendum also need to be reworded, since the referendum is still the legal framework for resolution of the dispute and therefore still the plan. It isn't just an aborted thing of the past. Also, the phrase about an "imposed nationality" is really hard to understand since the concept isn't related to the rest of the sentence. It doesn't have to do with the referendum at all and needs a better place. --JECE (talk) 00:38, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

@Montanabw: Statements such as This is a rather tendentious discussion, or worse It looks to me like we have an ownership problem (that you wrote before my reply) do not add any value to the discussion and are clearly provocative. M.Bitton (talk) 00:56, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

It appears that people willing to do the substantive work on this article are sorting put the details. Montanabw^(talk) 21:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Posting because I was pinged above. For the record, my only recent edit to this article was a completely tangential unlinking via Twinkle of a term that was linking to a disambiguation page instead of an article about the intended topic. It had nothing to do with the substantive content of the article, just with cleaning up an incorrect wikilink to the wrong other topic. I have nothing to contribute to the discussion at hand now, and no particular knowledge about the topic with which to get involved in it. Bearcat (talk) 13:34, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I disappeared. The main internet trunk line to the peninsula from Mexico City went out and was just restored. Thank you @Montanabw and JECE: for reading what I wrote and working on the article. I notice a few things:

• 1) The paragraph that starts "Spain had established a protectorate in Spanish Sahara" doesn't explain why there even was a dispute or how Morocco became involved in a Spanish territory. The key to that was that Spain administered its colonies and its Moroccan protectorate over Ifni, Tarfaya, and the Rif territory as a single administrative unit known as Spanish West Africa. Spain differentiated between its colonies and its protectorate, but Morocco did not, and based its claim to Western Sahara on the basis that it (Morocco) had historic ties with Spanish West Africa. I think that needs to be in there, otherwise people unfamiliar with the history are confused by why Morocco was even involved?
• 2) The sentence beginning "The legal basis for Sahrawi nationality law" refers to the 1999 constitution which is no longer in effect. The same basic information but citing the current 2015 constitution is given in the sentence beginning "Article 110 of the 2015 Constitution", so it seems to me the earlier text should be deleted as redundant and because it is cited to a constitution no longer in force.
• 3) In the section Attempts at resolution beginning and ending with "In 2007… vote in a referendum." gives the same information as the paragraph below that ends with the sentence "For some years, the SADR government has stated that it is willing in principle to allow Moroccan settlers to vote in the long-stalled United Nations (MINURSO) supervised referendum on Western Sahara independence or integration with Morocco.[citation needed]" The uncited sentence should be deleted, as it repeats information that is already in the article. The same holds true for the entire paragraph, including the quote that follows, beginning "On 10 April 2007, the Polisario Front presented" and ending "…territory who requests it." The paragraph is cited to dead links and primary sources and repeats the same information as appears in the first instance.
• 4) My last comment, and it is the biggest issue left is that we are still asserting that there is a nationality law. I had changed the title of the article to Sahrawi citizenship and nationality and kept it linked to the series on nationality laws. The reason is this article says "Sahrawi nationality law (also romanized with Saharawi) is the law of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) governing nationality and citizenship." It's a catch 22, if a referendum is held to determine what the people want, a law can be passed, but there is no such law now and saying that there is isn't logical. It doesn't mean that the Sahrawi people cannot obtain nationality or citizenship through other channels, but they cannot through a Sahrawi nationality law. If we don't move the article, the other option would be to make the lead sentence clearer, possibly "Sahrawi nationality law is authorized to be drafted under the constitution of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, upon resolution of the territorial dispute" or something similar?

Again, I truly appreciate the effort y'all put in to read what I had written and rework the article. SusunW (talk)

SusunW, first off, please take the time to fix the issues with the history section that I raised above. ("Montanabw, you've improved the . . . needs a better place.") I detailed a few problems that need fixing. As for the things that you noticed, you're wrong about 1). Spanish West Africa was a relatively late creation and did not include the Rif. If anything, its creation further separated the region from the Moroccan protectorate. Also, Ifni was not part of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco. The location of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña was ceded to Spain in the 1860 treaty that ended the War of Africa, and that location was mistakenly identified as Ifni. The Spanish government didn't occupy Ifni until 1934. Before 1934, the Spanish Sahara and the Tarfaya Strip/Tekna Zone were governed from the Captaincy General of the Canary Islands. That administrative arrangement didn't encourage Morocco to claim the Canary Islands, did it? I would also note that the Tarfaya Strip/Tekna Zone was included as part of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco despite culturally and politically having closer links to the Sahara. Morocco is involved in Western Sahara because of the concept of Greater Morocco, which includes the annexation of all of Mauritania in addition to Western Sahara and part of Algeria. Morocco fought the Sand War with Algeria shortly after the later gained its independence to try and annex the region around Tindouf. Morocco claims it had sovereignty over those vast regions in precolonial times. However, this is not backed up by historical facts, which is why the ICJ ruled that the Saharawis have the right to self-determination. About 2), I tried to fix the issue that you raised. I think that the 1999 constitution should still be mentioned since it seems to have been the first version to include a reference to Saharawi nationality law. About 3), I'm fine with streamlining the section so that it doesn't repeat itself. But I'm not sure why you want to delete the original text. If you have references that back up the unsourced claims, can't you just add the references to the existing text? About 4), you still seem to misunderstand the situation. I don't have strong feelings about the article move itself. But the Saharawi Republic can modify its nationality criteria whenever and however it wants. It doesn't have to wait for a referendum. The Saharawi Republic is widely recognized as a sovereign country and has been for decades. Saharawis can travel across vast stretches of Africa, especially, as Saharawi nationals. --JECE (talk) 21:30, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

JECE I'll work on it tomorrow. Today has been a day of catch up and frustration with the lack of internet for most of the day. I do wish that you would stop asserting that I don't understand the situation, but I appreciate your comments and am willing to overlook that. I am trying to streamline the complexities only as to how they relate to nationality law. There are plenty of WP articles that go into detail on the entirety of the conflict and it only needs enough here to provide background context. I could find no secondary source that says the 1999 constitution was the first to add a phrase about nationality legislation. Bontems gives the only constitutional history in relationship to it that I've found. But I'll try again to see if I can find one, maybe HeinOnline. We can't make that claim without a source. Not sure I understand your comments about 3). If I cannot access the permanently dead links, how am I supposed to verify that it isn't a copyvio or that it says what the source says? About 4 I don't misunderstand. There is no nationality law that has been drafted or passed. Saying that there is a law is a fabrication. The possibility of one being drafted does not create a legally enforceable instrument or policy. Montanabw, as you're a lawyer, can you advise if the best course is to move the article or reword the lede as I suggested, or if the text that states a law exists is fine? SusunW (talk) 23:16, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

SusunW: For the constitution question, I just used this to check the veracity of the claim: Constitution of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic#External links. Given that it is simple to check other versions of the constitution, I don't think that a better source than the one which is already provided is needed. --JECE (talk) 05:00, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

JECE we can't claim that without a source that it was the basis or foundational constitution for nationality. It would be OR, and specifically about law and proclamations, policy allows only limited citation, specifically stating that secondary analysis of "meaning, relevance, importance, typicality, influences, and so forth" is required. We can quote that constitution, and I have modified the text on that basis pending find a source that actually states it was the first constitution to establish the provision.

• I put in background of the dispute, including all of Greater Morocco, as per your request.
• I removed the duplications in the 2007 offer by SADR to include Moroccans in the referendum. Text that could be substantiated by the Al Jazeera source were retained. I removed analysis of the Polisario Settlement Proposal as we have no secondary source analyzing the material. I kept the quote.
• For "Mauritania actually recognized the Saharawi Republic's claim to all of Western Sahara", sources say in 1979 they relinquished claims.(Kalicka-Mikołajczyk 2021, p. 38)(Abi-Mershed & Farrar 2013, p. 18) It recognized the country in February 1984, thus I have added that information to the note that details SADR's recognition.
• On the referendum, it is clear in the article that negotiations are ongoing. To make it clearer, I moved the section on Attempts at resolution to appear following History and background. SusunW (talk) 17:19, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

More:

• I do not see the problem with "imposed nationality" and it has everything to do with a referendum. Without a referendum of the Sahrawi people saying what they want, no one gets to decide what state they belong to under international law. In a nutshell, nationality defines who belongs to a nation and what rights, privileges and obligations they receive and the international community gives them under international law. Who belongs is defined by a nation but the rights etc. are regulated by treaties, agreements, international protocols, etc. between nations. As most Sahrawi are stateless, the international conventions on statelessness grant them basic protections, but they do not get the full benefit of a nation's protection of them. To have that, they 1) have to be defined in a manner that is acceptable under international law (which at this point in negotiations requires agreement by SADR and Morocco), 2) have to be able to say what they want (have a referendum), and 3) have their decision recognized with the ability to make or join existing international agreements. (Nationality isn't the same as citizenship, which is defined by domestic law. Each nation has one nationality but it can have multiple citizenship schemes, full citizenship, partial citizenship (as was the case for colonized people, women, and people of various ethic identities), non-citizen nationals, as well as sub-national citizenship such as territorial, state/province, municipal, etc.) I'm happy discuss other wording.

I think I have addressed your issues and I did search for a source to clarify whether the 1999 constitution was the first to talk about nationality, but found nothing. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that a search from Mexico did not turn anything up. If you have other issues still, please advise. SusunW (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Looks like there is steady progress here. My two bits is that I see two different issues that probably each need to be addressed within the article. One of which is the status of people under international law, versus how they are viewed and protected – or not protected – by the SADR. It seems that if there are concerns about what one faction wants and the words they prefer using to describe their position, all we need are some reliable sources and a bit of careful work on phrasing. As long as we focus on NPOV tone, it should all be good. Montanabw^(talk) 21:10, 28 January 2022 (UTC)