The Chagos Islands and international orders: human rights, rule of law, and foreign rule
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221136015 |
| Author | Martin Welz |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178221136015
International Relations
2024, Vol. 38(4) 447 –466
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178221136015
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The Chagos Islands and
international orders:
human rights, rule of law,
and foreign rule
Martin Welz
University of Hamburg
Abstract
This article uses the Chagos Archipelago that is administered by the United Kingdom, used
as a military base by the US, and claimed by Mauritius, as a case study to explore competing
international orders and move the theorization of international orders forward. Considering
international orders as functionally and geographically limited sets of rules, I focus on those three
sets of orders that functionally relate to human rights, the rule of law, and foreign rule. I show
that those orders that promote human rights and the rule of law more consistently and reject
foreign rule have extended their geographic scope. The Chagos Islands dispute is an intriguing
case study to probe shifts of and attempts to protect these orders as a vote in 2019 at the United
National General Assembly forced states to take sides. At the same time, my analysis highlights
that realpolitik prevents the full overturn of the challenged orders.
Keywords
Chagos Islands, foreign rule, human rights, international orders, rule of law
This article explores competing sets of international orders, which I view as geographi-
cally and functionally limited, and aims to move the theorization of such orders forward.
The case of the Chagos Archipelago – a group of seven atolls comprising around 60
mostly small islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean – and the questions of which
country has the right to claim sovereignty over it and whether its forcefully removed
inhabitants have a right to return, is a promising case study to investigate the parallel
existence of orders, shifts over time, and to draw insights for other cases.
Corresponding author:
Martin Welz, University of Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 9, Hamburg 20146, Germany.
Email: martin.welz@uni-hamburg.de
1136015IRE0010.1177/00471178221136015International RelationsWelz
research-article2022
Article
448 International Relations 38(4)
The Chagos dispute is not a case like Westphalia (1648), Versailles (1918), San
Francisco (1945), or the end of the empires in the 1960s, which are ‘moments of order
building’.1 Yet, we can use the case to take stock of the situation regarding the geographi-
cal shape of some functionally limited orders. For a vote at the General Assembly of the
United Nations (UN) in 2019 forced states to take sides on such substantial issues as
human rights, rule of law, and foreign rule. When the United Kingdom (UK) as the colo-
nial power transferred the Chagos Archipelago in 1965 to the newly created British
Indian Ocean Territory and expelled the islands’ inhabitants, the Chagossians, to create
space for a military base jointly run with the United States (US) on the largest island of
the archipelago, Diego Garcia, only a few protested. Another set of orders was dominant
at that time, when the Cold War was at its height, one that accepted the breach of human
rights, violations of the rule of law, and foreign rule. This had changed by 2019 when 116
states voted in favor of a non-binding resolution of the UN General Assembly that
requested the UK to hand the archipelago to Mauritius,2 after the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) had ruled in an advisory opinion that the UK ‘has an obligation to bring to
an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible’.3 Fifty-six
states abstained and only six opposed the resolution. The guardians of the earlier domi-
nant orders had become increasingly isolated. Yet, with the US considering its military
base on the largest island of the archipelago, Diego Garcia, indispensable – also in light
of China’s growing military presence in the region – realpolitik thus far prevailed and the
UK did not transfer the administration of the islands.
This appraisal shows that the case is an intriguing example to illustrate the existence
of competing orders, trace their shifts, and thereby add substance to that strand of the
theoretical and empirical literature that considers international orders not as holistic but
foresees the existence of more than one order.4 To move the theorization of orders for-
ward, I draw on the existing literature on such orders as well as on the one about interna-
tional regimes and base my analysis on three assumptions. First, orders are functionally
and geographically limited, that is to say they serve a specific purpose (function) within
a defined (geographic) area. This implies that functionally similar orders can exist in
parallel. Second, orders are not static but regularly shift. Followers of one order – state
and non-state actors alike – try to increase the support base of the orders they promote,
that is, they seek to extend the geographical scope. Finally, increasing support for one
order might result in the crumbling of a competing order. Yet, only power shifts will lead
to the eventual fall of an order, particularly if realpolitik considerations are part and par-
cel of powerful states’ refusal to accept the shifting orders fully.
Orders, shifting orders, and actors
Drawing on the literature on international orders and international regimes, I view inter-
national orders as sets of rules in international politics, which are followed by interna-
tional actors. These orders are not necessarily universal. Rather they are functionally and
geographically limited. Put differently, other than English School writer Hedley Bull,
who offered an important intellectual stimulus for the study of international orders,
which he defined ‘as an actual or possible situation or state of affairs’,5 this article does
not assume that there is one international order which is promoted and followed by what
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