As part of the ongoing publication of the reference paper prepared by Dr. Moulay Boubker Hamdani, an expert in international relations and president of the Center for Strategic Thinking and the Defense of Democracy, under the title: “Pathways for Implementing the Moroccan Autonomy Initiative in the Sahara,” we present to our readers the third part, which addresses two key dimensions: the legal and the developmental.
The Constitutional and Legal Approach: Normative Framework, Hierarchical Coherence, and Institutional Stability
It is important to clarify that the constitutional and legal approach constitutes the solid normative foundation and the highest institutional guarantee upon which the implementation of the autonomy initiative must be based. This ensures its smooth and harmonious integration within the legal and institutional structure of the state, and provides the necessary constitutional protection for its sustainability and effectiveness against any potential political fluctuations.
In this context, the Kingdom of Morocco, through the 2011 Constitution, laid down advanced constitutional foundations that allow for the accommodation and structuring of a special autonomy system for the Sahara region. The preamble of the Constitution affirms the Kingdom’s commitment to its indivisible territorial integrity and to preserving the cohesion and diversity of its national identity, unified through the fusion of all its components: Arab-Islamic, Amazigh, and Sahrawi-Hassani, enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew, and Mediterranean tributaries.
Moreover, the explicit reference in Title IX of the Constitution to “advanced regionalization” as a decentralized territorial organization of the Kingdom—based on principles of free management, cooperation, and solidarity, ensuring the participation of concerned populations in managing their affairs and enhancing their contribution to integrated human development—offers a flexible and appropriate constitutional framework for granting the Sahara region an autonomous system with broader powers and a special status that takes into account the conflict’s particularities and the requirements of a negotiated political solution, without compromising the state’s unified structure or the sovereign prerogatives of the King and the central government.
Undoubtedly, the core of the Moroccan initiative of 2007—particularly its explicit commitment in paragraph 29 to “amend the Moroccan Constitution and incorporate the autonomy regime into it”—represents an exceptional strength that provides the Moroccan proposal with credibility and real guarantees. Elevating the autonomy regime to a constitutional status means it would be safeguarded from any amendments except through the strict and complex procedures for constitutional revision, thus ensuring its stability and permanence as an integral part of the Kingdom’s fundamental legal system.
However, the actual implementation of this commitment requires, once a final political agreement is reached, the drafting and adoption of a “organic law” specific to the autonomous region of the Sahara. This law must precisely define the nature and powers of the regional institutions (an elected regional parliament, a regional government appointed by the King, regional courts), the mechanisms for their election and formation, their funding sources (including a share of natural resources as per paragraph 13 of the initiative), and the ways in which they exercise their own, shared, and delegated powers in wide-ranging areas such as local administration, economic, social and cultural development, infrastructure, local policing, and even external cooperation within the limits of their competencies (paragraph 15).
According to legal doctrine, this organic law—issued in accordance with constitutional procedures—must ensure a precise balance between the requirements of regional autonomy and the preservation of the central state’s prerogatives, guaranteeing articulation between local autonomy and national cohesion.
