Mauritius and UK settle 50-year dispute over island

The British Government has agreed to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, in a deal to secure the future of a strategically important UK-US military base. Voice of America reports that British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the agreement would secure the future of the base at Diego Garcia, the largest in the chain of remote islands off the tip of India that has been under British control for over 50 years. The base, which is home to about 2 500 personnel, mainly Americans, has been involved in military operations including the 2003 war in Iraq and the long-running war in Afghanistan. Britain's Labour Government said without the deal, the secure operation of the military base would be under threat, with contested sovereignty and legal challenges, including through various international courts and tribunals. ‘It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK, as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner,’ Lammy said. As part of the deal, the UK will retain sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years and will pay Mauritius an undisclosed rent.

The deal will also create a ‘resettlement’ fund for displaced Chagossians aimed at letting them move back to the islands other than Diego Garcia, the VoA report notes. The Chagos Islands, which conjure up images of paradise with their lush vegetation and long stretches of white sandy beaches, have been at the heart of what Britain has called the British Indian Ocean Territory since 1965, when they were siphoned away from Mauritius, a former UK colony that gained independence three years later. Following a lease agreement with Britain, the US built the naval base at Diego Garcia for defence purposes in the 1970s. Around 1 500 inhabitants from the Chagos Islands were displaced to make way for the US base, in what Human Rights Watch said last year amounted to ‘crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an indigenous people.’ Chagossian Voices, a UK-based group representing the Chagossian diaspora around the world, voiced disappointment that the negotiations excluded those displaced. ‘The views of Chagossians, the indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.’

Full Voice of America report

To avoid breaching international law, the UK had labelled the Chagossians, whose ancestral links to the territory go back to the late 18th century, as ‘transient workers’, Al Jazeera reports. Former Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam launched a legal battle to win back the territory after a US cable was released by WikiLeaks in 2010, in which a Foreign Office official labelled Chagossians fighting for a right of return as ‘Man Fridays’. Mauritius won back sovereignty in 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issuing an advisory opinion that the UK should give up control of the islands, saying it had wrongfully forced the population to leave in the 1970s to make way for the US airbase. A subsequent UN resolution endorsed by 116 member states gave the UK six months to hand back the archipelago, but members of the previous Conservative Government – including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson – had raised objections that Mauritius might allow China access to the territory, and negotiations stalled. Critics said that a failure to abide by the terms of the ICJ ruling harmed the UK’s standing on the world stage, demonstrating a lack of respect for the rules-based international order. The joint statement issued by the UK and Mauritius on Thursday stated that Mauritius ‘will now be free to implement a programme of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, other than Diego Garcia’. Some Chagossians, however, dispute Mauritian sovereignty and are campaigning for self-determination as an indigenous people. Diego Garcia is nicknamed the ‘Footprint of Freedom’ both because of its shape and its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, within striking distance of Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Full Al Jazeera report