UK hands over Chagos Islands to Mauritius: What's this territory and what was the dispute?

The United Kingdom has finally agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

The Chagos Islands is an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean.

“This is a seminal moment in our relationship and a demonstration of our enduring commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rule of law,” the statement from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth read as per BBC.

The treaty will also “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians” it added.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the agreement secures the UK’s strategically-important military base at Diego Garcia, the largest in the chain of islands, for the future.

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The UK 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.

As part of the deal, the UK will retain sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years.

“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.

The development comes three months after External Affairs Minister S Jaishnkar had reaffirmed India’s support for Mauritius in the sovereignty dispute.

“I would like to again assure you today that on the issue of Chagos, India will continue its consistent support to Mauritius in line with its principal stand on decolonisation and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations,” Jaishankar, during a two-day visit to Mauritius, had said.

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The trip was one of his first bilateral engagements since he reassumed charge of the ministry in the Narendra Modi 3.0 government.

But what exactly was the Chagos Islands dispute about?

What was the UK’s role in it?

Let’s take a closer look

The Chagos Islands

The Chagos Islands or the Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres south of the Maldives. The Chagos Archipelago spreads out across 250,000 square miles, an area the size of Texas; taken together, the islands have a landmass the size of Manhattan.

A report in The Atlantic states that the islands were chanced upon by Portuguese navigators in the 16th Century. They mapped the islands and gave some of them the names that they retain even today. The Dutch came next; however, they didn’t stay.

Later, it came into the possession of France as well as Mauritius and Réunion. The French gave names to more of the islands. They imported enslaved workers from Madagascar and Mozambique, and later brought workers from southern India, to labour in the coconut plantations. After the defeat of Napoleon, Great Britain acquired Chagos and Mauritius.

Since 1971, only the atoll of Diego Garcia has been inhabited; it serves as a military base to the US and houses 2,500 American-military personnel and temporary foreign workers, mostly Filipino.

Chagos dispute between UK and Mauritius

Mauritius has for decades claimed sovereignty over the archipelago, arguing that it has been a part of its territory since at least the 18th Century, till the United Kingdom broke the archipelago away from Mauritius in 1965 and the islands of Aldabra, Farquhar, and Desroches from the Seychelles in the region to form the British Indian Ocean Territory. In June 1976, after the Seychelles gained independence from the United Kingdom, the islands of Aldabra, Farquhar, and Desroches were returned by the UK.

It was during this time that the UK forcibly removed thousands of Chagossians from their homelands and sent them more than 1,600km (1,000 miles) away to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they faced extreme poverty and discrimination.

After Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968, the UK refused to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius claiming that the island was required to “accommodate the United States’ desire to use certain islands in the Indian Ocean for defence purposes”.

As per a report by The Print, the UK threatened Mauritius that it would not grant it independence, lest they conceded to the demand of Chagos. And it seems that it worked with then Premier of Mauritius Seewoosagur Ramgoolam conceding.

Then in 1980, Ramgoolam, as the then-prime minister, asked for the territory to be restored to Mauritius at the United Nations General Assembly.

Years and years of dispute

The dispute between the two continued for decades. However, it was in 2015 that Mauritius initiated legal proceedings in these matters against the United Kingdom in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the Netherlands.

In the 2015 matter, the Permanent Court of Arbitration came down heavily against the UK, stating that London had “failed to give due regard to Mauritius’ rights” and declared that the UK had breached its obligations under the (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea).” The ruling also called out the UK for deliberately creating a marine protected area in the waters surrounding Chagos Islands in 2010.

However, nothing changed after the ruling and successive Mauritian governments continued negotiations with the UK government, also pursuing legal avenues. In 2019, the matter reached the UN’s highest court of justice — the International Court of Justice. Port Louis had argued that it had been coerced into giving the islands to the UK as part of colonial occupation of the country, a move, it stated, that was in breach of UN resolution 1514 that was passed in 1960, which specifically banned the breakup of colonies before independence, reported the Indian Express.

The ICJ then ruled in its favour, ordering the UK to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible”. However, the United Kingdom Foreign Office said that the ICJ ruling was “an advisory opinion, not a judgment” and claimed that “the defence facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organised crime and piracy.”

In November 2019, after Britain missed the six-month deadline to hand over Chagos, Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said the UK was now an illegal colonial occupier.

He followed it up by saying that the UK and US lectured countries “to respect human rights, but they are champions of double talk”. “They are hypocrites. Shame on them when they talk about human rights and respect,” he added.

In the same year, the United Nations General Assembly also backed a motion condemning Britain’s occupation of the remote Chagos Islands. While the US, Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives backed the UK in the vote, 56 countries abstained, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland and Romania. Other European allies including Austria, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland voted for the UK to relinquish sovereignty.

What had the UK said?

Britain had continuously defended its occupation of the Chagos Islands, arguing that “Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the archipelago and we do not recognise its claim.”

And as recently as January this year, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, ruled out the resettlement of former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands. He suggested that a return to the islands was now “not possible” for Chagossians who were forcibly displaced by the British government in the 1960s and 1970s.

Now, however, the UK led by Keir Starmer has taken a U-turn on its stance.

With inputs from agencies