Postcolonial theory challenges the proposition of colonialism as a closed chapter of history. It insists that political systems, economic dependencies, and even a structure of knowledge production persist in continuing colonial power structures. Sidi M. Omar’s work exposes how colonial domination carries on currently, a lot more than most people may think or know. Omar’s scholarship deals with Western Sahara, one of the world’s longest-standing unresolved colonial situations. While often framed as a territorial “dispute,” Omar disrupts this framing by naming what that is: an ongoing process of colonial occupation. From a postcolonial perspective, this re-naming is important. It reveals how colonial powers keep control, not just through force, but through language, law, and selective recognition on the world stage. Often, categories of Developed vs Undeveloped, First vs Third World, and Global North vs South are used to describe economic status groupings of nations based on GDP, another example of frequent renaming with the intent to be politically correct, but always falling short. The constant renaming of developmental statuses becomes redundant and meaningless as there are no terms that can fully encapsulate the lived reality of an entire place–much less a whole country. This goes for the use of GDP as well, as it can never be an all-encompassing measure of development, as it fails to account for many other factors that contribute to growth, development, productivity, the economy, and more.

A central contribution of Omar’s work is his critique of those international institutions that claim neutrality while reinforcing colonial hierarchies. Omar describes how legal frameworks that were to protect self-determination themselves become tools that delay it. Omar further disrupts dominant modes of knowledge, reminding us to be aware of whose voices get louder-and whose are muted-is never an accident. By placing the Sahrawi voices at the center, Omar resists an Eurocentric narrative of colonized peoples rendered passive or helpless. Instead, he foregrounds resistance, political agency, and historical continuity. In this way, it is not simply a postcolonial work of Sidi M. Omar; it’s actively disruptive. His perspective insists that thinkers revisit their own ideas on questions of sovereignty, legality, and justice in a world where colonialism has not ended, merely evolved. He challenges the common notion that “colonization is in the past’ while providing current examples of imperialist policies and ideologies that prevent development by promoting interdependence and maintaining power hierarchies that benefit wealthy nations and belittle the poor.