A ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2023 strengthened Mauritius’s claims to the Chagos Islands.<\/p>\n
It did so by endorsing an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019.<\/p>\n
The ICJ ruled that Britain’s 1965 separation of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius was unlawful and stated the UK must end its administration as rapidly as possible.<\/p>\n
While non-binding, the advisory opinion carries legal weight and prompted the UN General Assembly to demand the archipelago’s return to Mauritius in a near-unanimous vote in 2019.<\/p>\n
Muizzu’s office said the Maldives was reviewing these legal judgements.<\/p>\n
“The government of the Maldives maintains the firm position that, by virtue of historical and geographical proximity, it holds a prior claim to sovereign rights over the Chagos Archipelago over any other state,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“Accordingly, if sovereignty is to be vested in any nation, it must rightfully be the Maldives.”<\/p>\n
The statement said the Maldives government would “pursue all available avenues for a formal submission” to the ICJ and continued to “assess all lawful means to uphold the national interest”.<\/p>\n
“We remain hopeful that the United Kingdom, as a long-standing partner, will engage in meaningful dialogue to resolve this matter in a spirit of mutual respect and historical accuracy,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
If the Maldives did file a legal case, it would further complicate the UK’s deal with Mauritius.<\/p>\n
The deal has already been thrown into doubt by Trump, who said “this land should not be taken away from the UK” in a Truth Social post in February.<\/p>\n
The comments came despite the US Department of State giving its official backing to the UK government’s plan.<\/p>\n
Many Chagossians see the deal as a betrayal and want to see the UK retain sovereignty over the islands so they can one day return to their homeland.<\/p>\n
The Conservatives and Reform UK are staunchly opposed to the deal as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2023 strengthened Mauritius’s claims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-499256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}