Could you be eating conflict tomatoes?

Chances are, if you’ve bought tomatoes from a British or European supermarket recently, they will be labelled as originating from Morocco. But what the label doesn't say is that they could have actually come from Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that Morocco has occupied since 1973. A 30-year ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front, which represents the Sahrawi people, collapsed in 2020 and fighting continues to this day.

But after a 12-year legal battle came to an end this month, many farm and fish products exported by Morocco to the European Union will be required to carry the explicit Western Sahara label.

On 4 October, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) also confirmed an earlier ruling that blocked the EU’s inclusion of Western Sahara in its trade and fishery agreements with Morocco because they were agreed to without consent from the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara.

The Polisario has been working to gradually undermine the economic and financial interests that underpin Moroccan occupation, called the ruling ‘historic’.