부산대학교 도서관

The likelihood of a referendum on the Western Sahara is rapidly decreasing. Many deadlines have been missed since 1991, when the UN first promised Western Saharans a referendum on independence or integration into Morocco, but even the UN now admits that it will be 2002 or beyond. This will be of little comfort to the tens of thousands of Western Saharan refugees, who fled Morocco's takeover of the territory in 1975 and survive in Algeria in some of the most wretched camps in the world. In the meantime, Morocco has used the time to increase its grip on the territory with a settlement plan that has involved the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Moroccans, transforming the indigenous Sahrawis into a minority.