The U.Okay. has agreed at hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago within the Indian Ocean, over to Mauritius. The islands had been separated from Mauritius to make approach for a U.Okay.-U.S. navy base a number of years earlier than Mauritius gained independence from the U.Okay. in 1968. The settlement will permit for hundreds of Chagossians, who had been forcibly displaced by the U.Okay. within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, to return to the islands, though the U.Okay. will retain sovereignty over Diego Garcia, the island the place the airbase is located. (The Guardian)
Our Take
The deal introduced in the present day is essential symbolically in addition to geopolitically. At a time when the motion calling for postcolonial justice is gaining momentum throughout the globe, and particularly the World South, the Chagos Islands—thought-about the U.Okay.’s final African colony—are a reminder that some components of the world should not even postcolonial. It additionally indicators that there are pathways, via worldwide regulation and stress, to realize the motion’s objectives.
However the difficulty of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands has additionally carried essential diplomatic implications. In 2019, the Worldwide Court docket of Justice dominated that the U.Okay. had unlawfully carved out the Chagos Islands from Mauritius within the Sixties and that its continued administration of the islands was a wrongful act, issuing an advisory opinion that the U.Okay. was below an obligation to give up management of the islands.
