Oued Ed-Dahab-Lagouira

Oued Ed-Dahab-Lagouira encompasses the southern regions of Western Sahara, stretching to the Mauritanian border in what remains the most sparsely populated zone of the disputed territory. This region represents the frontier of Moroccan infrastructure investment in Western Sahara, where the government has developed fishing ports and transport links to integrate the territory into the national economy.

The fishing industry provides the primary economic activity along the Atlantic coast, though the European Court of Justice's October 2024 ruling invalidating EU-Morocco fishing agreements without Sahrawi consent creates legal uncertainty for European companies operating here. The region's arid desert climate makes sedentary agriculture impractical, with the economy depending on fishing, pastoral nomadism, and government spending rather than resource extraction.

This southern zone extends toward the UN-monitored ceasefire line with the Polisario Front-controlled refugee camps in Algeria, where over 100,000 Sahrawi refugees reside without access to any benefits from phosphate mining or fishing revenues. The MINURSO mission, extended in October 2025, monitors the ceasefire but lacks a mandate to supervise a referendum on self-determination originally envisioned in the 1991 settlement. The region exists in permanent geopolitical limbo: Morocco exercises administrative control while international law regarding permanent sovereignty over natural resources remains unsettled, and the Sahrawi independence movement persists across the border.