The Chagos Case: Chipping Away at Colonialism
In a move foreshadowing potential shifts in the United Kingdom’s policy on its overseas territories, the UK has finally agreed to open up talks with Mauritius to negotiate the long-running sovereignty dispute of the Chagos Archipelago. The island chain, a group of islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean located halfway between Sri Lanka and Madagascar, was originally founded under French administration until the early 1800s, when the territory was relinquished to British colonial forces. In the centuries since, they have been under the legal governance of the British Indian Ocean Territory, and the area has morphed into a restricted zone with a population of only 3000. The only people allowed onto the islands are contractors working on the joint United Kingdom-United States military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia atoll, and permission is denied to anybody who wants to enter the islands for commercial purposes.
In 1968, when the Republic of Mauritius was finally granted independence from Britain, it explicitly claimed the archipelago in Section 111(a) of its Constitution, claiming it as an integral part of its territory. Since then, it has also continuously argued the archipelago composes an essential component of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which by the United Nations Convention on Laws of the Sea grants sovereignty over marine resources. Their claims are tied together by the simple fact that they are the closest country to the archipelago, and raise the question of why this straightforward truth has gone unacknowledged by the UK. If Mauritius gained its independence, why would the islands not? The United Kingdom’s desire to retain its sovereignty over these islands, without any claim to territorial integrity, remains a vestige of the nation’s grapple with its loss of global dominance. Although its time in the spotlight is long since finished, by trying to hold onto unpopulated strategic military bases, the United Kingdom is resisting untying some of its final links to its colonial past.
We can most conspicuously see this in the apathy with which the United Kingdom dealt with the natives of the Chagos Archipelago. In the early colonial history of the Archipelago, Africans were enslaved by the French colonists of the time and forced to work on plantations on the island; over the years, a distinct Chagossian culture was cultivated, speaking the French-based Chagossian creole language. But when the United Kingdom decided to convert the populated islands into naval bases permanently, policies were issued that made it a criminal offense for Chagossians to be on the island without military clearance. With this in place, a controversial eviction was quietly executed between 1968 and 1973, transferring the Chagossians to the Seychelles and Mauritius, amongst other east African nations. Although this process occurred more than fifty years ago, the blatant disregard for human rights shown must not be seen as a singular instance but rather as a continual action. The right to return has been continuously denied and Chagossians who were born on the archipelago have introduced various legal challenges against their lack of compensation for being forcibly exiled.
The forced relocation of Chagossians has led to international condemnation and waves of international support for Mauritius, especially in developing countries. At the United Nations, the delegation of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of primarily developing nations that originated during the Cold War to show solidarity against the power politics of the time, expressed “unwavering support for decolonisation initiatives” to ensure that Mauritians gain back the territory that was removed from them. The African Union also stated its unconditional backing of Mauritius and urged the United Kingdom to relinquish its “colonial” claims of sovereignty. At last, it seems that these states’ wishes are coming true.
Interestingly, the issue of sovereignty had already been solved in the arena of international law. After the United Nations General Assembly voted in a “crushing defeat” for the UK in 2019 to return the islands to Mauritian sovereignty, the International Court of Justice issued a bold, but non-binding, call for the United Kingdom to return sovereignty to Mauritius and gave a six-month deadline. The language used in their decision referred to decolonisation and emphasised the right of the Chagossians to return to their homeland. The non-binding deadline was not respected, but it is clear that it resulted in some degree of progress, albeit three years later. The current negotiations should hopefully end in the transferral of sovereignty, but it will be a long and difficult process for Mauritius. Given the American strategic contracting of the base at Diego Garcia, it is unlikely that the months and years ahead will pass quickly, as the world’s superpower is not expected to be a willing participant in giving up one of its most tactical naval posts.
It is important to remember that just because the United Kingdom is opening dialogue with Mauritius, there will not necessarily be the dismantling of other overseas territories that are relics of the country’s colonial past. There are unlikely to be any changes in governance in the Falkland Islands or Gibraltar any time soon, especially as these are overseas territories with permanent populations that retain loyalty to the throne. In fact, Falkland Islanders recently renewed their assertion of British sovereignty over the island in a warning for Argentina not to invade or take inspiration from the Chagos case. Despite this, the Chagos case signals a vital step in the path towards decolonisation, showing international resolve against British rule in favour of the Chagos Archipelago’s rightful owners and leaving the remnants of a centuries-old empire remaining in one less corner of the world.
Flag of the Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Image courtesy via Wikimedia, ©1990, some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
