Western Sahara: What to read, watch and listen to
If you’re here via Counterpart's YouTube channel, thanks for your interest in diving deeper into underreported crises and the people living through them.
If you found this page another way, welcome.
Counterpart covers stories that are underreported in mainstream media, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some great coverage out there – if you know where to look. Each episode of Counterpart includes a curated list of some of the best reporting on this subject from a variety of angles and sources, to help give you a fuller picture of the crisis.
Counterpart also provides you with media analysis to help you make sense of the coverage that does exist – and to help you make up your own mind about the situation.
This is a living page – please leave a comment with other sources you find so we can grow this list!
🇲🇦 On the Moroccan occupation
- Western Sahara: Morocco makes its move (Barry Malone, Proximities, 26 April 2026)
- Human rights ignored as UK endorses Moroccan control of Western Sahara (Maxine Betteridge-Moes, The Canary, 15 August 2025)
- Today it is the Sahrawis, tomorrow it could be you (Najla Mohamed Lamin, New Internationalist, 4 November 2025)
- Rebranding occupation from Morocco to Gaza: Tourism, power and the business of forgetting (Farida Alvarez, The Polis Project, 4 February 2026)
- Today it is the Saharawis, tomorrow it could be you (Najla Mohamed Lamin, New Internationalist, 4 November 2025)
🌡️ On climate change
- Morocco accused of “greenwashing occupation” of Western Sahara (Joe Lo, Climate Home News, 25 November 2021)
- Sahrawi government launches climate plan (Western Sahara Resource Watch, 8 November 2021)
🏳 On the refugee camps
- Some food for thought, and little else (Maxine Betteridge-Moes, The Continent, 3 September 2025)
- Western Sahara's 'frozen conflict' heats up, but world's attention elsewhere (Maxine Betteridge-Moes, The New Humanitarian, 1 February 2023)
🎨 On arts and culture
- Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey used occupied land as a film set. That feels like a betrayal (Mohamed Sleiman Labat, The Guardian, 16 July 2026)
- Odyssey to Africa's last colony (Eoghan Gilmartin, Africa is a Country, 17 July, 2026)
🎥 Films
- Insumisas (Forward Films, 2023)
- Desert PHOSfate (Motif Art Studio, 2023)
- 3 Stolen Cameras (Equipe Media, 2017)
- Life is Waiting (Cultures of Resistance, 2015)
🎙️ Podcasts
- Sandfast (Asria Mohamed, 2022-23)
- Western Sahara: Africa's Last Colony (That Decolonial Centre, 30 October 2025)
- From Western Sahara to Palestine, the struggle is one. With Najla Mohamed-Lamin (New Internationalist, 20 March 2025)
🎓 Academic research
- Kapur, K. (2019). ‘The Mirage of Human Rights: Sahrawi Youth and the Occupation of Western Sahara.’ Fundación Mundubat. Available here
- Naïli, M. (2019). ‘Natural Resources in Western Sahara : A fishy battle at the doors of Europe’. Cahiers L’Ouest saharien, (9), pp. 131-149. Available here
✍️ Local journalists/media outlets
Maxine Betteridge-Moes
