Chagos Islands: UN General Assembly Resolution

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely—the rule of law and the rules-based international order, which the Government like to champion so much.

The immediate context of the debate is the overwhelming decision of the United Nations General Assembly on 22 May—by 116 to just six votes against—to back resolution 73/295, calling on the UK—in fact, demanding that the UK does this—to

“withdraw its colonial administration from the Chagos Archipelago unconditionally within a period of no more than six months”.

It called on

“the UN and all its specialised agencies to recognise that the Chagos Archipelago forms an integral part of the territory of Mauritius...and to refrain from impeding that process by recognising, or giving effect to any measure taken by or on behalf of ‘the British Indian Ocean Territory’.”

The resolution affirms that

“because the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago was not based on the free and genuine expression of the will of the people of Mauritius, the decolonisation of Mauritius has not been lawfully completed.”

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent case. The issue of the Chagos islands is not unique. Many other self-determination campaigns are looking at this case. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on West Papua. If this is not a just cause, how can there be justice for other islands and peoples like those of West Papua?

[Patrick Grady]

Speaking as a member of a self-determination movement, I wholeheartedly agree. I had the huge privilege of meeting Benny Wenda from the West Papua campaign recently. The SNP has a long history of solidarity with that cause. These are not difficult problems for the Government to solve. I will come on to why there are some good reasons why they should do so.

The UN handed down that resolution in the context of an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice on 25 February, which reached exactly the same conclusions. It is a comprehensive, definitive statement made under the due process of the international rules-based order. The UK Government, who are a permanent member of the UN Security Council, self-define as a soft-power superpower, believe that Brexit will lead to a glorious new era of empire 2.0, have invested millions of pounds in a global branding exercise called “Britain is GREAT”, and repeatedly demand that any number of other countries around the world comply with decisions of the United Nations, have none the less chosen to reject the resolution pretty much outright. They have left themselves in a state of diplomatic humiliation and international isolation. The five other countries that supported the Government at the UN were the Maldives and Hungary, Australia and Israel—neither of which are without critics of their own human rights records—and the United States of America, which is led by a man who is basically an international laughing stock. It is pretty damning stuff.

Whenever any of us has questions about whether blindly ignoring the advisory opinion of the ICJ and 116 other members of the UN General Assembly is a good idea for a country that is busy trying to extract itself from the biggest and most successful economic, social and political Union in history, the Government and the Minister simply double down. They say that Chagos has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814 and has never been part of the Republic of Mauritius, but that ignores the fact that the islands were a dependency of Mauritius when it was administered first by the French and then as a British colony until 1965, when it was detached from Mauritius as a precondition of independence, the declaration of which was drafted by UK lawyers in 1968. It ignores the ICJ’s findings that the colony, by definition, could not freely agree to detachment as part of its territory prior to independence.