Solih’s letter cost Maldives in Chagos case: Khaleel

Maldives abandoned its position in the Chagos maritime dispute after former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih sent a letter to the then prime minister of Mauritius, Foreign Minister Abdulla Khaleel said in Parliament today.

Khaleel said the 2021 letter was sent after Mauritius referred the dispute with Maldives to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). At the time, the Maldives had refused to recognize Chagos as part of Mauritius, arguing that ITLOS could not rule on maritime boundaries while the territory’s sovereignty remained unresolved.

However, ITLOS decided to hear the case, citing a 2019 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the Chagos Islands remained under Mauritian sovereignty.

Khaleel accused the previous administration of relinquishing Maldives’ claim, enabling Mauritius to secure part of the disputed maritime zone. The area roughly 95,000 sq km was split between the two countries, with the Maldives receiving 47,232 sq km and Mauritius 45,331 sq km. Under this, Mauritius received 0.96 sq km for every 1 sq km awarded to Maldives.

“The truth is that if the letter had not gone out … the issue of the sea, and also the issue of Chagos, is very clearly one that we could move forward with,” Khaleel said.

He added that the government was working with international lawyers to try to “recover the lost sea” for Maldives.

The Chagos Islands were under British rule after the colonization of Mauritius and surrounding territories. In the 1970s, Britain retained control of Chagos after granting Mauritius independence, forcibly removing around 2,000 inhabitants.

Mauritius challenged British sovereignty at the ICJ in 2018, and the court’s 2019 opinion paved the way for ITLOS to reject the UK’s jurisdiction and approve Mauritius’s proposal to divide the maritime zone.