What is Chagos Islands sovereignty dispute? Diligent IAS 07/12/2019 – Posted in: Daily News

Chagos Islands dispute

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered: Issue on Chagos Islands

 

News Flash

  • The UK government has failed to comply with a UN deadline to hand back the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius.
  • The UN had given the UK six months to give up control of the Chagos Islands – but that period has now passed.
  • It is officially part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

 

Chagos Islands

Chagos Islands

 

Issue

The UK decided to separate the islands from Mauritius prior to the country’s independence in 1968 and subsequently evicted around 2,000 people from the archipelago in order to set up a joint military base with the US.

In an advisory opinion on the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands published in February 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found the separation of islands in 1965 was in contravention of international law. The court urged the UK to end “its administration of the Chagos Islands as rapidly as possible”.

Despite Britain’s rejection of the ruling, an overwhelming majority of UN member states voted in favour of a non-binding resolution that urged the UK to “withdraw its colonial administration” from the Chagos Islands within six months.

 

Chagos Islands

The Chagos Islands or Chagos Archipelago are a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 individual tropical islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres south of the Maldives archipelago. This chain of islands is the southernmost archipelago of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a long submarine mountain range in the Indian Ocean.

 

Source: Indian Express

 

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