The Democrats raise concern for inactive Chagos reclamation works

The Democrats has expressed concern that President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu’s administration has not been making efforts to claim Chagos archipelago under Maldives sovereignty according to the presidential pledge.

The party released a statement on this, in which it said the Maldives changed its long-held stance regarding the archipelago during the previous administration led by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih.

Recently, the British announced it was handing over administrative control of the archipelago to Mauritius.

The Democrats described this as a loss of sovereign area for the Maldives due to either Maldives relinquishing its right to claim or non-action to make the claim.

Although the former government agreed to relinquish its right to make a claim for the Chagos archipelago while subsequently agreeing to vote in favor of Mauritius’ claim over the islands, the decision was never accepted by The Democrats which had condemned the previous administration’s move.

The party expressed concern for the inaction by President Muizzu’s administration to reclaim the loss of sovereign rights.

Maldivian king Hassan in a letter dating back 1560 had identified seven of the Chagos islands as part of Maldives’ sovereign territory.

The British occupied Chagos in 1965 when Mauritius was under its colonial authority, while it had given Diego Garcia to the US to operate a military base until 2036.

However, in 2019 Mauritius filed a formal claim to reclaim the islands at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ended in favor of the tropical island nation. The British were ordered to hand the Chagos islands over to Mauritius.

The United Nations, on multiple occasions demanded British revert the islands back to Mauritius’ administrative control as well.

After the ICJ ruling, a boundary demarcation dispute between the Maldives and Mauritius was filed at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) where the ICJ’s ruling was upheld while splitting a disputed 95,000-square-kilometer area between the Maldives and Mauritius.

The current administration, during the presidential campaign, promised to appeal the ITLOS ruling. The incumbent government had also established a special committee regarding the Chagos dispute, which is led by former Attorney General Mohamed Anil.