Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965
The Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 is an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In a 13–1 ruling (with only Judge Joan Donoghue dissenting), the Court deemed the United Kingdom's separation of the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius in 1965 through the British Indian Ocean Territory Order 1965, when both were colonial territories, to be unlawful and found that the United Kingdom is obliged to end "its administration of the Chagos Islands as rapidly as possible." == Request == On 23 June 2017, the UNGA voted in favour of referring the territorial dispute between Mauritius and the UK to the ICJ in order to clarify the legal status of the Chagos Islands archipelago in the Indian Ocean.