Excerpt from BBC
The maritime law tribunal of the United Nations has ruled that Britain has no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands.
It criticised London for its failure to hand the territory back to Mauritius.
The judges’ decision confirms a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a vote in the UN General Assembly.
The Indian Ocean archipelago includes a US military base. The UK has said it will hand the islands back when they’re no longer needed for defence purposes.
In response to the ruling, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said: “The UK has no doubt as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814. Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the BIOT and the UK does not recognise its claim.”
The panel of judges at the United Nation’s International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLS) explicitly criticised the UK’s failure to hand the territory over to its former colony, Mauritius, by December 2019, as earlier demanded by a near-unanimous vote at the UN’s General Assembly.
“The judgement… is clear and unequivocal. Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago,” Mauritius’s Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth told the BBC.
An international lawyer representing Mauritius in its dispute with the UK called on the British government to move quickly to surrender control of the islands.
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