Western Sahara’s timezone status, like nearly everything else about Western Sahara, is contested.

The territory uses UTC+1 year-round, no daylight saving, matching Morocco’s permanent clock that was adopted in 2018. The IANA identifier is Africa/El_Aaiun, after the territory’s largest city, known in Arabic as Laayoune.

The unresolved territory

Spain withdrew from its colony, Spanish Sahara, in 1976. The Polisario Front, representing the Sahrawi indigenous people, proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) on February 27, 1976. Morocco and Mauritania divided the territory between them the same year. Mauritania withdrew in 1979. Morocco then occupied the Mauritanian-held portion as well.

Since 1991, a UN-brokered ceasefire has been in effect, with a wall, the Moroccan Sand Wall or berm, running roughly 2,700 kilometers through the desert, separating Moroccan-controlled territory (about 80% of Western Sahara) from a thin eastern strip controlled by the Polisario Front and monitored by MINURSO, the UN mission established for the purpose.

The promised referendum on self-determination has not happened. The UN mission has been extended annually for over thirty years.

Morocco’s clock, imposed

Morocco moved to permanent UTC+1 in October 2018, abolishing DST. This was applied throughout Morocco’s administrative territory, including the occupied portions of Western Sahara. El Aaiun’s clocks changed with Rabat’s.

During the years when Morocco observed Ramadan-related DST suspensions (a peculiarly Moroccan practice of temporarily reverting to standard time during Ramadan), Western Sahara followed suit. The IANA database notes the complexity of Morocco’s DST history, which involved several years of suspending summer time for the Ramadan month, then resuming it, creating an annual timezone zigzag.

The permanent UTC+1 adoption in 2018 ended this complication for both Morocco and Western Sahara.

The refugee camps and their clock

In the Tindouf region of southwestern Algeria, roughly 170,000 Sahrawi refugees live in camps administered by the Polisario Front’s SADR government. They use Algeria’s timezone: UTC+1 in winter (same offset as Western Sahara), UTC+2 in summer (when Algeria observes daylight saving).

The irony is functional: the refugee population and the Moroccan-controlled territory they claim are on the same clock for half the year and one hour apart in summer.

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