Chagos Islands: UN General Assembly Resolution Debate
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Stephen Gethins
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Chagos Islands: UN General Assembly Resolution
Stephen Gethins Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I agree absolutely with my colleague on the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), about the dignity of the people of the Chagos islands. I am sure that my hon. Friend will come to this, but does this not raise a critical issue for the UK: respect for the rule of law?
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.”