Trump Signs Off on Chagos Islands Handover

United States President Donald Trump signed off on a deal for Britain to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, Downing Street said on Tuesday.

It’s now between us and the Mauritian government to finalize the deal. We have had the discussions with the U.S. and we are now finalizing with the Mauritians.
—Downing Street

Ownership: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the plans to surrender control of the archipelago in October 2024 after giving into rulings from the United Nations that the islands belong to Mauritius, although the East African country has never owned them.

• The Chagos Islands were a French colonial slave labor coconut plantation and a dependency of French colonized Mauritius.
• After the British captured Mauritius in 1810, France ceded it and its dependencies, like the Chagos Islands, to the British Empire in 1814.
• Under British rule, the archipelago continued to be a dependency of Mauritius until 1965 when the British Indian Ocean Territory was established and a commissioner was appointed to make laws for the territory, without the need for administration from Mauritius.
• Mauritius became independent from Britain in 1968.

The Chagos Islands were always under French or British ownership and administered only by Mauritius under the authority of those empires. A dependency is a state that exerts influence or control over a dependent territory’s affairs without having actual claim to the territory.

Trump’s support: It was expected that Starmer’s handover to Mauritius would receive resistance from President Trump since the U.S. shares joint ownership of the Chagos Islands’ Diego Garcia military base. However, in February President Trump said the deal “doesn’t sound bad,” and that he has “a feeling it’s going to work out very well.”

Downing Street’s announcement on Tuesday shows the deal now has full formal U.S. endorsement.

Costs: British Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel warned this handover would be “one of Britain’s worst foreign-policy failures of recent years.”

The agreement is that Britain will give away possession of the islands but will lease the Diego Garcia military base for the next 99 years. Britain has promised this will not cost American taxpayers, but it is expected to cost British taxpayers billions. Mauritius is reportedly asking for £800 million (over us$1 billion) a year to lease the base, plus billions of pounds in reparations.

Labour’s Chagos surrender deal could be signed imminently, which will see hard-pressed British taxpayers paying out billions of pounds to Mauritius while also giving them sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. It is like handing your house over to someone else, then paying to rent it out.
—Dame Priti Patel

Handover: The Diego Garcia base is a strategic outpost in the Indian Ocean that has provided both Britain and the U.S. military advantage in the region for decades. Its handover will be a blow to both American and British power.

To learn more, read “UK to Surrender One of Its Last Remaining Sea Gates: The Chagos Islands.”