Settlement Proposal - Background

Background

In 1978, the United Nations Security Council agreed to the basic principle of a UN-assisted Namibian independence process. But disputes remained over which group would determine Namibia's independence. Internationally, the division over Namibia was between, on the one hand, South Africa, Namibia's 'internal parties', the Western Contact Group (WCG), and on the other, SWAPO, the United Nations General Assembly, the Non-Aligned States in the Security Council, and the Frontline States (Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe - since its independence in 1980 - and Nigeria).

The UN Secretariat's UNTAG mission was supposed to be impartial even though both South Africa and SWAPO accused UNTAG of favouring the other side. (The General Assembly supported SWAPO financially for many years, including the construction of the United Nations Institute for Namibia in Zambia, which was set up to train Namibian exiles and refugees.

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