Chagos Islands

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls comprising over 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, approximately 500 kilometers south of the Maldives. The archipelago is the southernmost part of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, a long submarine mountain range. The islands were inhabited by the Chagossians, a Bourbonnais Creole-speaking people, from the 1700s until they were expelled by the UK between 1967 and 1973 to allow the US to build a military base on Diego Garcia. Since then, only the atoll of Diego Garcia has been inhabited, by US military personnel and contractors. The UK has been administering the Chagos Archipelago as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) since 1965, but in 2019, the International Court of Justice advised that the UK should end its administration as soon as possible and return the islands to Mauritius. In 2021, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea confirmed that the UK has no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, and in 2024, the UK announced it would hand over sovereignty to Mauritius, subject to a treaty.learn more on wikipedia