Chagos Islands: People Have Rights, Not Territory

It’s about time we discussed the elephant in the room. Not just the elephant, but the blatant double standards that are being left unchallenged in so much of the current political debate regarding the Chagos Islands.

The elephant being the sheer disregard for the plight of the Chagossian people by the current UK Government. The double standard being that while everyone acknowledges, affirms and supports the right of the people of the Falkland Islands to self-determine, that same principle doesn’t seem to apply to the Chagossian people, whose homeland they were forcibly removed from by the British state. It’s a crass miscalculation and one — if we don’t change course — that will undermine not only British interests internationally, but the very values that we fought and died for.

After the Second World War, a process of decolonisation began. Colonies gained independence all over the world; new nations were born. People were free to choose their own futures, countries could make their own allegiances, and people could start to express their cultures, languages and identities. With this in mind, you cannot dispute that decolonisation has been a tremendous achievement in righting historic wrongs, and accepting that ‘people have rights, not territory’, as noted by John Hume.

However, this same principle doesn’t seem to garner any support or understanding when former colonial territories choose a different path. One whereby they choose to retain their links to their former colonial administrators rather than outright independence, or integration into the sovereignty of a larger neighbour.

Successive British governments have defended the right of the Falkland Islanders to retain their status as a British Overseas Territory, in line with their wishes and their identity. They’ve done this in the face of nations around the world who support Argentine claims to the islands, despite Argentina's continuing claim to sovereignty and its invasion of the Falklands in 1982.

The logic of the idea that larger neighbouring countries should engulf smaller nearby territories simply because they’re next door is colonialism in and of itself, and it’s a perversion of the cause of decolonisation and democracy that many of these countries claim to care passionately about.

Despite the bluster frequently emanating from Argentine President Javier Milei, the UK government remains committed to the rights of Falkland Islanders and — despite sovereignty disputes with the Spanish over Gibraltar — Britain consistently reaffirms its support for the right of Gibraltarians to self-determine, too.

So why do the same rules not apply to the Chagossian people whose families and communities were forcibly removed from the Chagos Islands by the British government in the late 1960s and early 1970s in pursuit of a joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia?

I accept that most people, even some parliamentarians, peers and political leaders, may not know, acknowledge or understand the history or significance of what seems like a small, remote and — perhaps to a lot of people — like an irrelevant group of islands thousands of miles away from the United Kingdom in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

But the islands are far from irrelevant. They certainly aren't irrelevant in terms of environmental protection. The territorial waters surrounding the Chagos islands form one of the biggest Marine Protection Areas in the world. Formed by the Labour government under Gordon Brown in 2010, the MPA is home to coral reefs and an array of unique species.

The islands aren’t irrelevant to national security either. The base at Diego Garcia is of high strategic importance to British and American reach overseas thanks to its central location in the Indian Ocean providing access to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

But most importantly, the Chagos Islands aren’t irrelevant to the Chagossian people who are vying to return to their homeland, to resettle and to reclaim their way of life as they have been for decade after decade.

The islands were first discovered uninhabited by the Portuguese in the 16th century; they were later claimed and settled by the French a century or so later, who would go on to establish coconut plantations, using slave labour from Africa, from whom the Chagossian people descended. Following the Napoleonic Wars, the islands were ceded to Britain in 1814 along with Mauritius and numerous other overseas territories.

The Chagos Islands — along with the Seychelles — were administered by Britain as a dependency of Mauritius for many years. First, the Seychelles was detached from Mauritius in 1903 when the United Kingdom made the archipelago a separate crown colony, and in 1965 the British Government detached the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius before Mauritian independence, creating the British Indian Ocean Territory.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice concluded that the detachment of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius was unlawful under international law and, that the UK should bring its administration of the Chagos Archipelago to an end as rapidly as possible.

But administrative convenience is not the same as ownership. The fact that the Chagos Islands were administered from Mauritius does not answer the separate and important question of what say the Chagossian people should have in determining the future of their islands. Nor should the historical administration of the islands from Mauritius be allowed to turn the Chagossian people into an afterthought in a debate about their ancestral homeland. Nobody would suggest that the people of the Seychelles should be cut out from decisions about their islands, merely because of historic colonial arrangements that saw them as a dependency.

Indeed, the question about who should determine what happens to the British Indian Ocean Territory is arguably even more important now. The Chagossian people are not simply absent from the islands by choice; their communities were intentionally removed. The fact that the islands no longer have a permanent population cannot reasonably be used as an argument against their self- determination, or as a justification to deny them a meaningful say in deciding their future constitutional status. This is where the comparison with the Falklands becomes particularly uncomfortable.

Britain has consistently argued that the wishes of the people who live in the Falkland Islands must be respected, and that sovereignty should not be negotiated against their wishes. That principle is central to Britain's defence of the Falkland Islanders' right to self-determination.

But if people have rights, not territory, then surely that principle cannot depend upon whether those people currently live on the territory in question — particularly when the reason they do not live in the said location is because their own government removed them through coercion and force.

The issue becomes even more complicated following the UK–Mauritius Treaty — currently stalled due to interventions from President Trump — under which Mauritius would gain sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, while payments from the British government would ensure the continued operation of the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia via a 99 year lease. It would then fall to Mauritius to allow, if any, resettlement of the islands by the Chagossian people.

Aside from what one may think about the stalled Treaty, sovereignty cannot be the end of the debate. Instead it should be the beginning of another one. The question shouldn’t solely be about who the rightful, sovereign owners of the Chagos Islands are. Instead, the question should be — who gets to decide what happens to the Chagos Islands in the first place?

A majority of Chagossians have made their voices clear: they want to be British citizens, living in a British Overseas Territory with all the freedoms and rights that accrue. This was made clear in a House of Lords survey which asked around 3100 Chagossians — in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the United Kingdom — what their preferred status, given the choice, would be. The outcome was that a clear and sizeable majority wished to remain under British administration.

As well as this, in 2015 KMPG did an in-depth study into the resettlement of the British Indian Ocean Territory and found that there would be no fundamental legal obstacles that would prevent a resettlement of the Chagos Islands to go ahead. In 2026, comparative to the proposed UK- Mauritius Treaty, resettlement would be considerably less of a financial burden on the British tax payer and would allow for Chagossian democratic processes to take place, and secure the long- term future of the base at Diego Garcia.

The UK government has to admit accountability and take responsibility for what happened to the Chagossian people in events leading to their exile. Meanwhile in the present, the government needs to acknowledge that only they can right this historic wrong and that isn’t achieved by handing over sovereign British territory to a nation who never owned the islands, and whom the native population, largely, want nothing to do with.

Instead, they should allow for a phased resettlement of the outer islands, allowing Chagossian people to rebuild their communities and culture while retaining their British status just like those citizens in the Falklands, Gibraltar, Anguilla and the other British Overseas Territories.

The Chagossian community should not be treated as an inconvenience — politically or otherwise. They are the people whose families and communities were uprooted from the islands in the first place. They are the people who’s livestock and pets were intentionally killed while they were left economically destitute, treated as second class citizens and abandoned by the British state.

If Britain is serious about the principle of self-determination, then the wishes of the Chagossian people must be treated as more than an obstacle to be managed by governments negotiating over a map. Their right to return and their right to have a meaningful say over the future of their homeland should be at the heart of this debate, not distortions of historical and political reality.

Chagossians should not have to choose between being British and being ‘decolonised’. Neither should they simply be expected to accept that the only choices available to them are continued exile or incorporation into Mauritius.

There may be legitimate and complicated questions about sovereignty, international law, defence and the future of the Diego Garcia airbase. But none of those questions should erase the people at the centre of this story. If the principle of self-determination means anything, it cannot simply mean that states decide which people's voices matter, and which people’s voices don’t.

The UK cannot reasonably defend the right of Falkland Islanders to determine their own future, defend the same principle for Gibraltarians, and then remain silent when it comes to the people who Britain forcibly evicted from their homes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is about whether the Chagossian people are given a democratic choice in determining their own future, or whether they are condemned to insignificance by their own government. It’s an inconvenient truth that successive British governments have chosen to ignore — a majority of Chagossians want to be British and to return to the outer Chagos Islands. This isn’t about geography or political convenience, this is about a people. It’s time Westminster listened. After all, people have rights, not territory.

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