In 1965, the UK excised the Chagos Islands from the colony of Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in connection with the founding of a US military facility on the island of Diego Garcia. Consequently, the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were secretly exiled to Mauritius, where they became chronically impoverished. This book considers the resonance of international law for the Chagos Islanders. It advances the argument that BIOT constitutes a 'Non-Self-Governing Territory' pursuant to the provisions of Chapter XI of the UN Charter and for the wider purposes of international law. In addition, the book explores the extent to which the right of self-determination, indigenous land rights and a range of obligations contained in applicable human rights treaties could support the Chagossian right to return to BIOT. However, the rights of the Chagos Islanders are premised on the assumption that the UK possesses a valid sovereignty claim over BIOT. The evidence suggests that this claim is questionable and it is disputed by Mauritius. Consequently, the Mauritian claim threatens to compromise the entitlements of the Chagos Islanders in respect of BIOT as a matter of international law. This book illustrates the ongoing problems arising from international law's endorsement of the territorial integrity of colonial units for the purpose of decolonisation at the expense of the countervailing claims of colonial self-determination by non-European peoples that inhabited the same colonial unit. The book uses the competing claims to the Chagos Islands to demonstrate the need for a more nuanced approach to the resolution of sovereignty disputes resulting from the legacy of European colonialism.

This book offers a detailed account of the legal issues concerning the British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Islands) by leading experts in the field. It examines the broader significance of the ongoing Bancoult litigation in the UK Courts, the Chagos Islanders' petition to the European Court of Human Rights and Mauritius' successful challenge, under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, to the UK government's creation of a Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Archipelago. This book, produced in response to the 50th anniversary of the BIOT's founding, also assesses the impact of the decisions taken in respect of the Territory against a wider background of decolonization while addressing important questions about the lawfulness of maintaining Overseas Territories in the post-colonial era.The chapter ‘Anachronistic As Colonial Remnants May Be...’ - Locating the Rights of the Chagos Islanders As A Case Study of the Operation of Human Rights Law in Colonial Territories is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Reflections on the ICJ's Chagos Advisory Opinion and its broader context: British colonialism, US military interests, and human rights violations.

David Vine recounts how the British & US governments created the Diego Garcia base, making the native Chagossians homeless in the process. He details the strategic significance of this remote location & also describes recent efforts by the exiles to regain their territory.

This monograph considers the application of general rules of international law to islands, as well as special rules focused on islands, notably Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Such rules have been applied in several landmark cases in recent years, including the International Court of Justice’s judgments in Territorial and Maritime Dispute (Nicaragua v. Colombia), and arbitral awards in the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (Mauritius v. United Kingdom) and the South China Sea Arbitration (Philippines v. China). Among other things, this monograph explores: the legal concepts of “islands”, “rocks” and “low-tide elevations”; methods of securing sovereignty over and the maritime zones generated by islands; islands and historic titles, bays and rights; problems of delimitation in the presence of islands; legal issues arising from changes in islands over time (notably from climate change); and contemporary techniques for resolving disputes over islands.

During the cold war, the US government sought to establish an overseas military presence in the Indian Ocean. This graphic novel is a shocking account of British complicity in the forced exodus of the Chagos Islanders from their homeland to make that plan possible.

Expanded version of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Cambridge, 2010.