LONDON, May 22 – Britain signed a deal on Thursday to hand the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, formally recognising Mauritian sovereignty after decades of dispute. Under the agreement, London will retain control of the strategically important US-UK military base on Diego Garcia, leasing the atoll for 99 years with an option to extend for 50 more.
In exchange, Britain will pay Mauritius about £101 million per year (around £3.4 billion over 99 years) and set up a £40 million trust fund for the Chagossian people displaced from the islands in the 1960s and 1970s. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the pact secured “strong protections, including from malign influence,” to keep Diego Garcia safe and ensure the base remained under allied control.
Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy stressed the base’s importance. Starmer told reporters that the Diego Garcia base’s location was “of the utmost significance to Britain, from deploying aircraft to defeat terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to anticipating threats in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific”. Lammy said the deal “will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security”. Starmer added that by concluding the deal “on our terms” he was ensuring Diego Garcia could “operate well into the next century”.
Mauritius’ new Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam welcomed the accord as a long-sought victory. “With this agreement, we are completing the total process of decolonization,” he told Mauritians on television. He had warned earlier that any treaty must fully respect Mauritian sovereignty. The treaty restores Mauritius’ sovereignty over the entire archipelago – undoing Britain’s controversial 1965 separation of the islands – while guaranteeing the continued operation of the military base.
Chagossian campaigners, whose ancestors were evicted to make way for the base, criticised the accord. They say they were not consulted and that the deal ignores their community’s rights. In London, two British nationals born on Diego Garcia won a High Court injunction to delay Thursday’s signing, arguing the agreement excluded Chagossians. The judge lifted the injunction hours later, saying Britain’s interests would be “substantially prejudiced” if the pause continued.
Analysts note Diego Garcia’s pivotal role in regional security. A Reuters factbox described it as a “key military base in the Indian Ocean for the U.S. and Britain”. The atoll was used recently for strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen and for relief flights to Gaza, and it served as the launch point for the 2001 Afghanistan campaign. Its location – roughly between Africa and Indonesia – has also made the archipelago strategically significant as China’s influence grows in the Indian Ocean.
The treaty now goes to parliament in London and Port Louis for ratification. British officials said it follows international calls, including a 2019 U.N. court advisory opinion that London should end its control of the islands, and would finally close the book on a decades-old sovereignty row.
