The case of the island of Diego Garcia: Territory without International Law, people without rights

Abstract

 This article discusses the case of the island of Diego Garcia and, more generally, the Chagos Archipelago islands. Placed under British administration as part of the autonomous territory of Mauritius, the archipelago was removed illegally from the rest of the colony and its inhabitants expelled from the 1966 agreement by which Britain ceded the island of Diego Garcia to the construction of a huge US military base in the Indian Ocean. The struggle of the Chagossians to obtain fair compensation and the right to return home has been brought before the courts of the United Kingdom, the United States and even to the European Court of Human Rights, without success. The establishment by the United Kingdom of a protected maritime area in 2010, actually aimed at securing the ancient inhabitants of the islands would never return. This fact, which entailed the elimination of the traditional rights of Mauritian fishermen, triggered the response of Mauritius, which initiated arbitral proceedings in the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, where it has achieved a partial legal victory. Fifty years after the agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States, a window of hope seems to open for the victims of this nightmare, revealing the difficulty of the exercise of genuine access to justice in current international law.