UK-Mauritius Chagos Agreement |10 June 2025

Chagossian activists challenge legality of new bilateral agreement

Bernadette Dugasse and Bertrice Pompe, activists advocating for the rights of the Chagossian people, have submitted a formal legal communication to the United Nations Human Rights Committee challenging the legality and legitimacy of the 2025 bilateral Agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago.

A press release issued on Sunday said the treaty was negotiated and concluded without the participation or consent of the Chagossian people, who remain displaced from their homeland since the orchestrated deportation carried out between 1965 and 1973. “It explicitly bars their return to Diego Garcia, historically the most populous island, and entrenches the colonial and strategic use of the territory by leasing it for up to 99 years to the United States. The Agreement constitutes the crystallization of a historical injustice and threatens to make permanent the exclusion of an entire people from their native land,” it stated.

Before submitting these communications,they were involved in a comprehensive use of all available UN human rights mechanisms last May 26, including; Engaging with relevant UN Special Rapporteurs, notably on minority issues, internally displaced persons, indigenous people, promotion of truth, Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Triggering the Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD); Dialoguing with the UN OHCHR desk officers responsible for the UK and Mauritius.

Individual communication to the UN Human Rights Committee

The UN Human Rights Committee, the treaty body (group of independent experts) responsible for monitoring implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), hears only individual communications under the First Optional Protocol. Accordingly, the communication against Mauritius will be submitted in the name of three Chagossian authors, born on Diego Garcia and forcibly displaced during British colonial rule.

The authors allege violations of: Article 1 (self-determination), Article 2(3) (access to effective remedies), Article 12 (freedom of movement and right to return), Article 25 (participation), and Article 27 (minority rights).

Extract from the Summary of the communication to the Human Rights Committee states,“The present claim concerns the continuing violation of the authors’ rights arising from the systematic and State-engineered displacement of the Chagossian people between 1965 and 1973, a displacement rooted in a broader pattern of structural colonial injustice.

“This forced removal has given rise to enduring and intergenerational consequences, including persistent discrimination, statelessness or precarious legal status, social and political exclusion, denial of the right to return to their ancestral land, and the ongoing inability to exercise and transmit their cultural identity and practices. 

“These cumulative harms, maintained through successive State acts and omissions, both from the United Kingdom and Mauritius, constitute a continuing breach of the authors’ rights under the Covenant. The imminent ratification of the 2025 bilateral Agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos archipelago, including Diego Garcia, which was the largest and most populous island prior to the forced removals, would amount to a definitive and irreversible endorsement of a continuing violation originally initiated by the colonial power.

“By excluding the Chagossian people from the process and de facto accepting their permanent displacement, the Agreement entrenches the denial of their right to return and the effective exercise of their cultural, spiritual rights. It risks transforming an ongoing injustice into a permanent legal reality, in clear breach of the State’s obligations under the Covenant.”

The submission will be accompanied by a request for interim measures, urging the Committee to ask Mauritius to suspend the ratification of the 2025 Agreement while the Committee considers the merits of the case.

While the Committee’s decisions and interim measures are not legally binding, they carry significant moral and legal authority. As a quasi-judicial body, the Committee’s jurisprudence shapes international legal norms and State obligations. Rule-of-law-based societies are expected to uphold their commitments under the ICCPR and to respect the views and procedures of the Committee.

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