Following the establishment of the Special Committee on Decolonization, the Spanish Sahara was included in 1963 in the preliminary list of territories to which the declaration on the granting of independence to colonial peoples and countries applied, and from that year on the question of Western Sahara had been regularly considered by the Special Committee and in the General Assembly.[4] On 20 December 1966, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2229[5] called on Spain to hold a referendum on self-determination in the territory.