Challenges and Prospects for the Chagos Archipelago

Laura Jeffery, Chris Monaghan, Mairi O'Gorman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040227619
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Challenges and Prospects for the Chagos Archipelago considers the origins, challenges and future of Chagos, bringing together leading experts and academics specialising in differing aspects of the Chagos dispute.

In 1965, as part of negotiations leading to Mauritian independence in 1968, the UK government excised the Chagos Archipelago from the colony of Mauritius to form part of a new overseas territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The UK then set about removing the population of the Chagos Islands in order to allow the United States to construct a military base. As a consequence of the UK's acquisition of the Chagos Islands and the expulsion of the Chagossian population, there has been wide ranging litigation brought by Mauritius and the Chagossians. This has reached the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, the European Court of Human Rights and the UK Supreme Court. This book offers a wide-ranging debate between experts and practitioners, including those of Chagossian and Mauritian heritage, touching upon key developments and offering an inclusive approach that transcends traditional disciplinary silos. Issues such as international and constitutional law, human rights, colonialism and decolonisation, using creative writing to express the experience of banishment, international relations, environmentalism, and globalisation, will be explored as part of a dialogue that sheds new light on the Chagos dispute. Edited by experts on Chagos, the contributors are drawn from across the globe, and all have a distinctive take on what has happened, what it means for the world and the region, and how Chagos will both shape and be shaped by the future.

This book will be of great interest to students, academics and researchers from across the humanities and social sciences, including political science, international relations, law, sociology, socio-legal studies, human rights, social anthropology, indigenous rights, history, colonialism, postcolonialism, and cultural studies, as well as practitioners, policymakers and general readers who are interested in Chagos.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Olivier Bancoult
• Foreword by Philippe Sands
• Indian Ocean map
• Chagos Archipelago map
• zistwar Sagosian, nu tu bizin amenn li
• Introduction
• 1 The Chagos Saga: 21st Century Dispute about Incomplete Decolonisation
• 2 The Chagos Archipelago in Late Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean World History
• 3 Origins, Legacies, and Future: The Chagossians, a Population in Exile
• So immaculate – Peros Banhos, Saloman, Diego Garcia: Bien Prop – Peros Banhos, Saloman, Diego
• 4 Chagos: Plantation or Paradise?: Island Edens and Indian Ocean Empires, 1600–2023
• 5 Human Rights and the Marine Protected Area around the Chagos Archipelago
• 6 Return of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and Chagossian Identity: Constitutional, Legal, and Political Perspectives
• 7 Political and Legal Debates about Chagossian Ethnicity and Indigeneity
• 8 Intergenerational Challenges, Cultural Identity, and Future Prospects for Chagossian Communities in the UK
• ayapana in a british plastic plant pot
• 9 Certainty and Uncertainty: Native and Older Generation Chagossian Perspectives from Mauritius amid the UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Act 2022
• Limuria is in Our trust
• 10 Voicing the Trauma of the Lost Territory: Creative Writing, Therapy, and the Chagos Refugees Group
• This poem is intuitively aware of the erasure of the Chagos Archipelago…
• 11 “Notes for an Essay: On a Literature of Solidarity” from Diego Garcia, A Novel
• 12 The British Courts and the Chagos Story: An Exercise in Colonial Justice
• 13 Stakeholders or Bystanders?: An Attempt by Seychellois Chagossians to Intervene in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
• 14 The 1966 BIOT Agreement and Polaris
• 15 The Power behind the Throne: The US Government Must Face Its Responsibility for the Chagossian Exile
• “UK Ambassador Lobbied Senators To Hide Diego Garcia’s Role In Rendition” “L’ambassadeur britannique lobbied les sénateurs cachera le rôle de Diego Garcia dans la restitution”
• 16 The Indo-Pacific and the Chagos Archipelago: Two Logics, Two Futures
• 17 Flagpole Fights, Courtroom Clashes, and Coconut Crabs
• 18 Why Has It Taken 25 Years for the UK to Start Negotiating an Overall Settlement on Chagos with Mauritius?
• Ode to Chagossian Zistwar
• Afterword
• Index