Contested language in the making and unmaking of Western Sahara’s extractive economy

Abstract

This article considers the battle over resource extraction in the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara. I analyse how the language of human rights has simultaneously been used by the Moroccan state to justify its extractive operations in the territory while Saharawi refugees use it to challenge these operations. Such competing invocations of human rights generate insight into how rights are made and re-made through configurations of populations, territory, markets, and regulations.