The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy by Sands Philippe

Author:Sands, Philippe [Sands, Philippe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474618151
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2022-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

Resolution 71/292

On 1 June 2017, Mauritius requested that the General Assembly take action on Chagos. A debate was scheduled at the Assembly for the end of the month, to be followed by a vote. Mauritius circulated an informal draft resolution, a request for an advisory opinion with the two questions we had drafted. Was the decolonisation of Mauritius lawfully completed? If not, what were the legal consequences? A ‘position paper’ set out the history and the arguments in favour of a resolution.

Reports came in that Britain was engaged in ‘heavy campaigning’ in New York, and lobbying capitals around the world to vote against the resolution. Latin American countries that had lost cases at the Court, like Colombia, were said to be favoured targets. In a letter to all the UN members, Britain set out its stall: Chagos was a bilateral dispute between the two countries, for them to resolve – it was not a multilateral matter on decolonisation, so the General Assembly had no authority to request an opinion from the Court.

The attitudes of Russia and China would be significant. Both had territorial issues of their own to worry about – Crimea and the South China Seas respectively – and would take comfort that an advisory opinion on Chagos would set no precedent. Our aim was to ring-fence Chagos, to treat it as a discrete issue of decolonisation, not about territorial sovereignty, and to make clear that a dispute which was purely about territorial sovereignty could not be the subject of an advisory opinion request. On this basis, both countries indicated they would not oppose the resolution, helpfully for our side. Russia suggested (and obtained) a modest change to one of the draft questions, to make even clearer the distinction between Chagos – a decolonisation issue – and other territorial situations that were not connected to colonialism.

Another key issue to be neutralised was the future of the US base at Diego Garcia, the old ‘Camp Justice’ where Bob Hope once performed. This was important for many countries and also, if we got to The Hague, for the judges, who would not want to be accused of being asked to close a major American military base. Mauritius circulated a note to all UN members, confirming once more that it supported the continued operation of the base at Diego Garcia in accordance with international law. Later, Mauritius went a step further, offering the United States a ninety-nine-year lease. Fake news abounded, as word arrived that British diplomats were stoking up rumours that Mauritius wanted to lease the base – or another Chagos island – to China. The claim was nonsense and easily swatted away.

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