1. Introduction

The British Indian Ocean Territory (‘BIOT’) or Chagos Islands, is situated in the Indian Ocean. It is located immediately below the Maldives and is flanked by Africa to the West and the South East Asia to the East. The BIOT was created on 8 November 1965 by the 1965 BIOT Order in Council, a piece of UK primary legislation which excised the inhabited Chagos Archipelago from the British colony of Mauritius along with three uninhabited atolls from the colony of the Seychelles. The partitioning of Mauritius on the eve of independence; the involuntary displacement of the Chagos Islanders (pursuant to the construction of a US naval facility on Diego Garcia); and their subsequent chronic impoverishment in Mauritius have all remained highly controversial in the intervening years. It seems inconceivable that almost 20 years after the end of the Second World War, and the creation of the United Nations, that the UK government would, in effect, exile the population of the entire Chagos Archipelago and then deny to the United Nations that the Islands had ever had a permanent population. However, as the government records quoted in a number of Bancoult judgments show, this is precisely what happened. Since the early 1970s, the UK government has fought hard to prevent the Chagos Islanders from returning to their ancestral homeland by rejecting their right of abode in the BIOT/Chagos Islands and by refusing the demands for adequate compensation for all those affected.