Chagos Islands Dispute

In News 

Recently, Mauritius welcomed the Universal Postal Union’s (UPUs) decision to ban British stamps from being used on the Chagos archipelago.

Key Points 

• The vote by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) follows a longstanding spat between Mauritius and Britain over the Chagos Islands, where London and Washington operate a joint military base.

  • This is another big step in favour of the recognition of the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos.

• The UPU will stop registering, distributing and transmitting stamps” bearing the words British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the name given by Britain to the archipelago.

• Uk response 

• Britain insists the archipelago belongs to London and has renewed a lease agreement with the U.S. to use Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands, until 2036.

What is the Chagos Islands dispute about?

• Mauritius has argued that the Chagos Islands 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 Seychelles in the region to form British Indian Ocean Territory. 
• In June 1976, after Seychelles gained independence from the United Kingdom, the islands of Aldabra, Farquhar, and Desroches were returned by the UK.
  • The UK declared these islands as an overseas territory in November 1965.
• After Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968, the United Kingdom refused to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius claiming in petitions submitted to the Permanent Court of Arbitration that the island was required to “accommodate the United States’ desire to use certain islands in the Indian Ocean for defence purposes”. 
• The largest island on the Chagos Islands archipelago, Diego Garcia, is where the US and the UK operate a large military base and was also used as a US military base for the US-led attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s. 

• For decades there was no litigation concerning the violation of human rights and sovereignty in the Chagos Islands. 
  • However, in 2015, Mauritius initiated legal proceedings in these matters against the United Kingdom in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in the Netherlands. 
• The UK made several attempts to resist Mauritius’ attempts to take the matter to international court by claiming that the issue was a bilateral matter.

Global Responses

• Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling 
  • The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2015 that the “United Kingdom failed to give due regard to Mauritius’ rights” and declared that “the United Kingdom 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.

• UN General Assembly
  • In June 2017, at the UN General Assembly, 94 countries voted in support of Mauritius’ resolution to seek an advisory opinion on the legal status of the Chagos Islands from the International Court of Justice in The Hague. 
  • The US and the UK were among the 15 countries that voted against the resolution. The vote came as a blow for the UK and the US because 65 countries abstained from voting, including many EU countries, on whom the duo may have been banking on for support.

  • In the 2020 year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognising that “the Chagos Archipelago forms an integral part of the territory of Mauritius” and urged UN agencies “to support the decolonisation of Mauritius”

• the International Court of Justice

  • In February 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), ordered the UK to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible”.
  • Mauritius had submitted before the court 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.
  • UK response 
    • After the ICJ ruling, the United Kingdom  said that the ICJ ruling was “an advisory opinion, not a judgment” and claimed that “the defence facilities on British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organised crime and piracy.”

India’s response

• India was among nations to vote in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded the UK withdraw its “colonial administration” from the Chagos Archipelago unconditionally, supporting Mauritius in its quest for the restoration of sovereignty over the island chain in the Indian Ocean.

Significance of Mauritius as Regional Hub for India 

• India deals with the islands of the southwestern Indian Ocean (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Reunion and Seychelles) on a bilateral basis but if it considers them as a collective, Mauritius could be the axis of India’s island policy.
• Mauritius can facilitate a number of Indian commercial activities like a banking gateway, a hub for flights to and from Indian cities and tourism in the southwestern Indian ocean.
• India could also contribute to the evolution of Mauritius as a regional centre for technological innovation.
• Being an island nation, climate change, sustainable development and the blue economy are existential challenges for Mauritius so it is the right partner in promoting Indian initiatives in these areas and can also become a valuable place for regional and international maritime scientific research.
• Strategically also, for security cooperation in the southwestern Indian Ocean, Mauritius can serve the demands of all the island nations around it as well as the East African states.

Source: TH