It’s official authorities coverage underneath President Mohamed Muizzu that the Maldives has the strongest declare to the Chagos Islands. His is the primary Maldivian administration to say sovereignty over the archipelago, situated within the central Indian Ocean and residential to the joint U.Okay.-U.S. navy base on Diego Garcia.
In doing so, Muizzu has inserted the Maldives into the long-running dispute between the UK and Mauritius over sovereignty over Chagos.
Chagos was administered as a dependency of British Mauritius from 1814 till 1965. That 12 months, three years earlier than Mauritius gained independence, Britain separated the archipelago from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and set up the navy base on Diego Garcia. The Chagossian inhabitants was then brutally expelled to make manner for the bottom.
The separation ran counter to decolonization rules barring the dismemberment of colonial territories earlier than independence.
Mauritius has objected ever since and, in recent times, has seen worldwide legislation and world public opinion flip in its favor. In 2019, the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice concluded that Mauritius’ decolonization had not been lawfully accomplished and that Britain ought to finish its administration “as quickly as doable.” That very same 12 months, the United Nations Basic Meeting overwhelmingly endorsed that place by 116 votes to 6.
Mounting strain finally led Britain to barter with Mauritius, culminating in a 2025 treaty that acknowledged Mauritian sovereignty whereas retaining Diego Garcia underneath a 99-year lease association. But the deal stays stalled amid British political opposition and U.S. considerations over the bottom’s safety and continued operation.
Amid these negotiations, the Muizzu administration has asserted that neither the U.Okay. nor Mauritius has the strongest declare to Chagos, the Maldives does. It due to this fact opposes any switch of sovereignty to Mauritius whereas its personal declare stays unresolved.
Muizzu raised this objection in letters to the U.Okay. authorities in November 2024 and January 2026, with then Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy in December 2025, and once more in a September 2026 letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham looking for talks.
The federal government’s case is nebulous. It rests principally on a Sixteenth-century doc during which the exiled Sultan Hassan IX claimed title to the “seven islands of Pullobay,” recognized within the Maldives with Foalhavahi, or Chagos. The federal government additionally cites Maldivian folklore, alleged centuries-old gravestones bearing Dhivehi script, and the islands’ proximity to the Maldives.
The declare additionally has no precedent in Maldivian diplomacy. In additional than 60 years since independence, no earlier administration has claimed sovereignty over Chagos.
Beforehand, Maldivian considerations centered on maritime boundaries, because the Maldives’ EEZ overlapped with waters claimed on the premise of Chagos. Malé stored its place on Chagos sovereignty ambiguous, coping with both the U.Okay. or Mauritius relying on which higher served its pursuits. It entered delimitation talks with the U.Okay. in 1992 and joined Mauritius in a 2011 communiqué opposing the U.Okay.’s marine protected space round Chagos, which restricted fishing.
The declare of sovereignty over Chagos itself has its origins within the politics surrounding the 2023 presidential election. Opponents of then President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih started conflating the Maldives’ EEZ dispute with Mauritius with the separate difficulty of sovereignty over Chagos.
The controversy started after it emerged that Solih had written to Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth in August 2022, recognizing Mauritius’ sovereignty over Chagos. This reversed the Maldives’ earlier place as one in every of solely six nations to oppose the 2019 United Nations Basic Meeting decision endorsing the ICJ opinion in favor of Mauritius’ declare to Chagos.
Solih’s shift seems to have mirrored the rising worldwide authorized recognition of Mauritius’ declare. Throughout maritime delimitation proceedings initiated by Mauritius earlier than the Worldwide Tribunal for the Legislation of the Sea (ITLOS), the Maldives argued that the case couldn’t proceed whereas sovereignty over Chagos remained disputed between Mauritius and the U.Okay.
ITLOS dismissed that objection, treating sovereignty over Chagos as settled in favor of Mauritius.
As soon as Solih’s letter grew to become public, nonetheless, the dispute turned sharply political.
His opponents argued that recognizing Mauritius’ declare weakened the Maldives’ case earlier than ITLOS. Though the tribunal’s ultimate ruling in April 2023 awarded the Maldives barely extra of the disputed maritime space than Mauritius, the opposition portrayed the end result as a lack of Maldivian territory.
The rhetoric escalated when the EEZ dispute grew to become entangled with a brand new sovereignty declare. Former President Mohamed Nasheed, then locked in an inside wrestle with President Solih throughout the ruling MDP, argued that the Maldives itself had a declare to Chagos and that Solih had betrayed Maldivian pursuits by recognizing Mauritius’ declare. Former President Abdulla Yameen and the opposition Progressive Get together of Maldives (PPM) quickly adopted the identical place. Neither, nonetheless, had superior such a declare whereas in workplace.
It was on this political context that Muizzu inherited the problem and turned it into authorities coverage. After Yameen was barred from contesting the 2023 election, Muizzu led the PPM-Individuals’s Nationwide Congress (PNC) coalition to victory on a nationalist platform constructed round defending Maldivian sovereignty.
Alongside the “India Out” marketing campaign, he pledged to recuperate the Maldives’ “misplaced” maritime territory. In workplace, that rhetoric hardened into coverage. Muizzu rejected the ultimate ITLOS judgment on the maritime boundary and have become the primary incumbent Maldivian administration to say sovereignty over Chagos itself.
Muizzu has formally withdrawn Solih’s 2022 letter supporting Mauritius’ declare and promised to submit proof supporting the Maldives’ declare to Chagos to related worldwide our bodies. He has additionally created a brand new authorities workplace to supervise territorial boundaries and associated disputes.
Maybe most dramatically, in February the federal government deployed Coast Guard vessels and drones throughout the total 200-nautical-mile zone it claims, together with waters awarded to Mauritius by ITLOS, and intercepted Sri Lankan fishing vessels there. Regardless of the theatrics, the ITLOS judgment on the maritime boundary is ultimate and never topic to abnormal enchantment. Repeating such deployments in waters assigned to Mauritius would due to this fact threat turning a settled authorized dispute into a global incident.
Nor do these actions advance the Maldives’ separate sovereignty declare over Chagos, which has to date gained no worldwide traction. The U.Okay. has proven little inclination to entertain it, reiterating that Chagos sovereignty stays a bilateral matter between the U.Okay. and Mauritius and doesn’t concern the Maldives.
Mauritius, in the meantime, suspended diplomatic relations with the Maldives in February 2026.
For now, then, the declare’s clearest affect is home moderately than worldwide. It permits Muizzu to position Chagos inside a broader political narrative about defending Maldivian sovereignty and recovering territory supposedly misplaced by earlier governments. Internationally, nonetheless, the declare has but to change both the authorized or diplomatic panorama surrounding Chagos.