“We are being told by the West to simply accept our reality — the reality of occupation,” Sahrawi journalist Nazha el-Khalidi tells me. “Why don’t we have the same right to self-determination as Ukrainians?”

El-Khalidi’s comments were made against the background of a major diplomatic shift in recent months that has seen the Joe Biden administration and various European powers back Morocco’s proposal to designate Western Sahara as an autonomous region within the Moroccan state. This would, in effect, amount to formalizing Morocco’s illegal occupation of the territory.

Covering an area the size of the United Kingdom, resource-rich Western Sahara is Africa’s last colony — or what the United Nations designates as a “non-self-governing territory.” The Sahrawi people were denied independence in 1975 after former colonial power Spain reneged on its promise of a referendum on the country’s future status, instead carving up the territory between Morocco and Mauritania, a decision that was backed by the United States. About half the Sahrawi population fled to neighboring Algeria to escape the subsequent Moroccan invasion.