Malvinas: the government was enthusiastic about an international decision reinforcing the claim of sovereignty

A decision of the International Court of Justice on the case of the Chagos Archipelago, under British control, has today activated the diplomatic channels of Argentina so that the government of Mauricio Macri may come back to claim the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands before the international authorities. .

"It is an important fact that we must pay attention that corresponds to the similarity with the Argentine claim of the Malvinas. In the case of the Chagos Archipelago, as in the case of Malvinas, it is a territorial dismemberment in which the population on the islands was displaced against their will, in this case on the mainland. Argentine, in 1833. ", said Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie, after a cabinet meeting attended by Macri.

More specifically, the International Court of Justice issued its advisory opinion on the separation in 1965 of the Chagos Archipelago of Mauritius. This advisory opinion was requested in 2017 by the United Nations General Assembly and finally failed in favor of the Chagos Archipelago which was part of the British colony of Mauritius. In 1965, three years before independence, the United Kingdom separated this archipelago from Mauritian territory and later leased it to the United States for a military base still in operation today. On this occasion, the population of Chagos was expelled from this territory.

The Court emphasized the binding nature of the principles set out in General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV), the cornerstone of decolonization, which endorses the principle of territorial integrity as a corollary of the principle of territorial integrity. self-determination. The Court also recalled that self-determination does not apply in the case of populations that do not constitute "peoples" holding this right. In addition to the support given to Mauritius, Argentina sponsored – in 2017 – the resolution of the General Assembly that requested this advisory opinion and intervened through the intermediary of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the relevant cases of this procedure before the International Court of Justice, pursuant to directives of a State policy on the question of the Malvinas Islands.

Thus, the Argentine Foreign Ministry said today in an official statement that the advisory opinion of Chagos "this is of importance to the issue of the Malvinas Islands because it is a situation of territorial dismemberment and that there is reference to fundamental principles in the claim on our islands ".

The Court decided by 13 votes to 1 that the separation of Chagos was not valid and constituted an unlawful act involving international responsibility. Y considered that the United Kingdom had the obligation to put an end to Chago's administrationand to allow the decolonization of Mauritius to be completed and invited all States to cooperate with the United Nations in this process.

The Court ruled that referendums could be organized without the intervention of the General Assembly, valuing both the role of this body and that of the Committee on Decolonization that follows the question of the Malvinas. He indicated that it was up to the Assembly to decide and oversee the modalities of the decolonization of a territory.

In the Macri government, for example, they were keen to revive the United Nations Decolonization Committee, which will meet as it does every year in April. The case of the Chagos case will be considered as a new argument in favor of claiming sovereignty.