UK secures military base in Indian Ocean for 99 years amidst sovereignty negotiations.
In a historic agreement, the United Kingdom has agreed to turn over ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, the UK will keep the Diego Garcia military base under a 99-year lease.
This agreement will allow the Chagossians and their descendants to return home after being expelled nearly 60 years ago.
The Chagos Islands were first settled in 1783, when the French government relocated African slaves to work on plantations there. Coincidentally, that was also the year that the British government first drew up plans to settle Australia, although the initial plan did not involve convicts.
British control dates back to 1814 and 1815 when it seized control of the Chagos Islands and Mauritius, the latter achieving independence in 1968.
One year before Mauritius’ independence, the UK government began removing the Chagossians from their homes because the UK and US governments had made a basing rights agreement. The US would pay for a lease over one of the islands, Diego Garcia, for a military base, but they required the islands to be uninhabited.
Since 2000, the UK has faced pressure, both internally and externally, to allow Chagossians to come home, on the basis that their expulsion was a human rights violation.
Finally, in 2022, the UK agreed to enter negotiations with Mauritius.
The next step would be for Parliament to pass legislation to adopt that treaty into domestic law, thus making it enforceable.
The UK government’s power over external or foreign affairs resembles Australia’s own external affairs power.
The executive branch of the government has the power to negotiate and sign treaties on behalf of the country, without the input of Parliament.
However, for it to become enforceable, it must be approved by Parliament to have any real effect. However, in recent years, the UK’s upper house, the House of Lords, has been stripped of some of its legislative authority. It now focuses more on detailed analysis and committees.
Until 2009, the House of Lords was also home to the country's highest court, and had actually found the expulsion of the Chagossians to be lawful.
The US government goes the other way; only the Senate votes on adopting treaties.
The difference between external affairs in the UK and Australia is the purpose and source of power. The lack of a constitution in the UK establishes ‘parliamentary sovereignty,’ where Parliament is not limited in its powers.
The source of the power in Australia is the Australian Constitution. While it is very broad, covering most, if not all, extraterritorial matters, its scope is intended to ‘fill in the gaps’ in the legal system.
However, the Australian version draws on the same origin as the UK’s: international customary law, with much of that coming from UK common law.
The UK will retain a 99-year lease over Diego Garcia before it is handed over to Mauritius. The most famous ‘99-year lease’ is the agreement between the UK and China in 1898 that the UK would hand over Hong Kong after 99 years, allowing China to retake it in 1997.
Under common law, 99 was the longest time a lease could be held before renewal was needed. It was chosen because it was the last double-digit number.
Originally, feudal law, based on a system of obligations, saw lords grant peasants parcels of land to live on, in return for services to the lord. This might include serving as soldiers or giving their lord a certain percentage of their harvest each year.
Today, property is divided into ‘leasehold,’ where a person leases the land instead of owning it, and ‘freehold,’ which involves ownership of the land. Both forms of ownership involve taxes to the government, but a person leasing property has an ‘obligation’ to pay ‘rent’ to a ‘landlord’ in return for being able to live on the property.
Internationally, the Hong Kong treaty did not involve rent payment. European countries exploited a weak Qing China to secure rent-free ‘unequal treaties.’
Globalisation, the United Nations, and equal sovereignty of all countries means that the lease with Mauritius will probably involve some form of money.
The agreement has yet to be signed or passed into law, but even though the negotiations began under the Conservative Party, there has already been some protest from Parliament.
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