Falklands claim: ruling against UK could be good precedent for Argentina

A court decision against UK, in a conflict similar to the one this country has with Argentina over Falkland Islands, could set a precedent by claiming sovereignty. Last Thursday, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ratified on sovereignty of Republic of Mauricio on the Chagos Islands.

By an eight-to-one majority, ITLOS ruled that it was competent to resolve the dispute over the maritime boundary between Mauritius and the Maldives – which includes the waters adjacent to the Chagos – and rejected the Maldives’ request to consider the Kingdom. United as an “indispensable third party” in the case, according to the text of the judgment published by the court on its website.

The dispute concerned maritime borders between the Maldives and Mauritius. They occur across two maritime spaces that the Chagos Archipelago projects. Therefore, when Mauricio filed the complaint to determine the borders between the two states, Maldives made several preliminary objections on the grounds that the court has no jurisdiction to be resolved as there was an outstanding issue on Chagos sovereignty in which the UK was a binding party and was not consulted.

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“The Special Chamber considers that the findings as a whole provide a sufficient basis for concluding that Mauritius can be considered as the coastal state in relation to the Chagos Archipelago for the purpose of delimiting a maritime border even before the process of decolonization of Mauritius is completed ”, underlines the sentence.

Faced with this new decision, the Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, demanded that Britain end its “illegal occupation” of the islands. Shortly after the sentence was known, he asserted that “the judgment of the special chamber of Itlos is clear and unequivocal: Mauritius is sovereign over the archipelago of Chagos ”.

As he pointed out, in dialogue with the newspaper The Guardian, “the UK must now fully comply with international law: you must immediately end your illegal occupation of the Chagos Archipelago, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and now the Itlos have determined is exclusively within the sovereignty of Mauritius ”.

In turn, the authority of this island nation located in the Indian Ocean, recalled that “in a few days, the United Kingdom will assume the presidency of the Security Council (of the UN)” and urged the European country to announce during this term “which will comply with international law“.

Likewise, Jugnauth indicated that the eventual end of the British occupation of the Chagos “has no implications for the US military base to Diego García (one of the islands of the archipelago), which Mauricio has undertaken to maintain ”.

We must not forget that the The UK retained possession of Chagos after the independence of Mauritius in 1968, Pagandole to this nation over £ 4million for the islands. In the 1970s, between 1,500 and 2,000 islanders were forcibly evicted so that the larger island, named Diego Garcia, could be leased to the United States to serve as an air base. For four decades, the expelled Chagossians have organized protests demanding that they be allowed to reenter and denounce London’s “double standard”, which defends the right to self-determination of the kelp of the Malvinas but denies them this right.

As, London again ignored the claim after the publication of the Itlos judgment. A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told the BBC: “The UK has no doubts about our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which has been under continuous British rule since 1814; Mauritius has never had sovereignty over BIOT and the UK does not recognize their claim ”.

In May 2019, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the United Kingdom to end the colonial administration of the Chagos Archipelago. At that time, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry celebrated what happened as a precedent in the country’s claim for sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands.

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But the The UK ignored this resolution. For this reason, Mauricio traveled to Itlos to resolve his dispute with the Maldives, to strengthen his arguments against the British state, which was accomplished on Thursday.

At the United Nations General Assembly, 116 countries, including Argentina, voted in 2019 in favor of the non-binding resolution based on the opinion of the ICJ, which was presented by African countries and which urged the United Kingdom to “withdraw its colonial administration” from the Chagos Islands within six months.

Of the 193 who made up the Assembly, only six, including the UK Yes United States, they voted countermeasure, co-sponsored by Argentina. While the others 56 abstentions, including Canada, France and Germany, and 15 did not vote.

The similarity of the claim of the Chagos to the Malvinas

Successive Argentine governments have compared the conflict that the Republic of Mauritius has with the United Kingdom over the sovereignty of the Chagos with that of Argentina over the rule of the Malvinas Islands. “Although the case of the Chagos Archipelago cannot be equated with that of the Falklands, in both cases are concerned by the guiding principles of decolonization”, Recalled in 2019 the national Ministry of Foreign Affairs comparing the two conflicts.

On January 3, on the occasion of 188 years of occupation of the islands, the national government reaffirmed its claim of sovereignty on the Falkland Islands. By an official declaration, ask them legitimate and imprescriptible rights»In this territory.

The Falkland Islands were illegally occupied by British forces that they expelled the population and the Argentinian authorities legitimately established there, replacing them with British subjects ”, detailed the Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I specify that the invasion “has never been spoiled by any Argentine government ”.

Finally, from the government, they assured that “recovery the effective exercise of our sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands he is a permanent and inalienable objective of the Argentine people, as it is enshrined in our national constitution and constitutes state policy ”. And they caught the attention of International community regarding the need to perform bilateral negotiations between the United Kingdom and Argentina which allow find one peaceful solution to the sovereignty dispute.

// The Government has again claimed its< droits de souveraineté légitimes et imprescriptibles >> on the Falklands 188 years after the occupation of the islands

On the occasion of this anniversary, the Secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic Daniel Filmus, also made a post on their networks in which he said: “It is time for the United Kingdom to resume dialogue in accordance with UN resolution 2065. There is no place for colonialism in the 21st century “.

On December 16, 1965, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 2065 – the first referring exclusively to the question of the Falklands -, in which it recognized the existence of a sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom and called on the two countries to negotiate for a peaceful settlement. solution to the controversy, reports the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Since his inauguration as president, Alberto Fernandez He clarified his position on sovereignty over this archipelago. As one of its first government measures, in December 2019, the Malvinas secretariat has bailed out review the agreements with Great Britain and deepen the claim.

Last September, the executive presented a new card, in which it marked its new continental limits as well as an extension of its maritime limits. The project was approved early August and this new image should be included in all official maps, for use in educational institutions and public institutions.

With the Law 27,757 maritime areas approved August 4 by the National Congress, this new cartographic design was made available. In addition, the indication has been incorporated that “the outer limit of the Argentinian continental and island shelf is delimited in accordance with the points of geographical coordinates sent”, in an annex resulting from article 6 of the pre-existing law 23.968 on maritime spaces.