Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth insisted last week that Mauritius will not compromise on the resettlement of the Chagossians in its talks with the UK. The recent Budget also announced an upcoming second expedition to study resettlement and, at a UN conference in July last year, Mauritius laid out a plan on how it plans to organize the Chagos Islands, once it comes under Mauritius’ control. So, what is resettlement likely to look like?

1) The fight for resettlement 

Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth told the Chagos Welfare Fund last Saturday that Mauritius will not compromise when it comes to resettling the Chagossians in the Chagos islands during its talks with the UK. And in the recent 2023-24 Budget, the government announced a plan to organize a second expedition to the islands, specifically to study resettlement options. This is not something particularly new; back in July 2022, speaking at a UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, Dr. Rezah Badal, Mauritius’ Director General of the department for Continental shelf, maritime zones, administration and exploration, laid out a plan on what Mauritius wants to do with the Chagos; Out of the 650,000-sq.-km zone, 520,000-sq. km will be classified as a sustainable-use zone with limited fishing allowed; a 37,00- sq.-km as a conservation-zone; and a 9,000-sq.-km zone set aside for resettlement. 

Officially, the Mauritian state organizing resettlement is a relatively new issue. Before that, Chagossian groups had long looked to London as the road to resettlement. Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagos islands were forcibly depopulated by the UK to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia – the largest atoll in the Chagos – with the Chagossians themselves scattered between Mauritius, Seychelles and the UK. In the 1990s, Chagossian groups started a long legal fight within British courts to be allowed to resettle in the UK-held islands as British citizens. In 2000, a divisional court judgement quashed the 1971 ordinance that had barred resettlement on the islands. 

The UK government then replaced it with a new ordinance that restricted entry to the Chagos with the exception of the Chagossians – who could theoretically resettle any of the islands, except Diego Garcia. In 2002, the engineering firm Posford Haskoning came up with a report on the feasibility of resettlement on the outer islands, ruling it out as a long-term prospect. Then in 2004, the UK government came up with a twin set of orders – the British Indian Ocean Territory (Immigration) Order and the British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order that slammed the door shut on resettlement once again. 

Those orders were again challenged by Chagossian groups, led by Olivier Bancoult and the Chagos Refugee Group (CRG) in British courts. They succeeded at the UK’s High Court and the Court of Appeal, but eventually lost their case at the House of Lords. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights refused a plea by 1,786 to force the UK government to allow resettlement. Then in 2013, a Tory-Liberal Democrat government announced that it would hold a new resettlement study by the firm KPMG to replace the earlier 2002 study. Although the 2015 KPMG report ruled that resettlement was feasible, in 2016, the UK government ruled that option out, announcing instead a £40-million package for Chagossians. Out of that, by February 2023, only £885,944 had been spent so far; the bulk of that, £571,073, was spent on visits to the islands organized by London for a total of 154 Chagossians. Mauritius-based Chagossians opposed the trips, while in June 2020, Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth told Parliament that Mauritius could not be expected to work with the UK on the package if it was premised on the UK’s continued illegal occupation of the Chagos. 

The remainder of that money was spent on smaller-scale language and skills programmes for Chagossians in Mauritius, Seychelles and the UK. After the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its General Assembly backed Mauritius’ claim on the Chagos –, and subsequently binding decisions out of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) – Chagossian groups in Mauritius lined up firmly behind Port Louis, with Mauritius, rather than London, now looking like the best bet to secure resettlement.

2) The two reports

Given that, thus far, it is the UK government that has studied resettlement of the Chagos in any detail, it would be important to look at those reports to figure out what resettlement might look like and what would be needed to push it through. 

First is the 2002 study. That report restricted itself to studying resettlement options only on outer islands, ruling out any resettlement on Diego Garcia itself on the assumption that that the US, which has a base on the island, would not be happy to see resettlement there. What the 2002 report concluded was that it would be uneconomical to return to the coconut cultivation that employed Chagossians there before they were uprooted; tourism prospects were limited because of no airport and rising sea levels, all of which made resettlement prohibitively expensive for London. 

Commenting on the conclusions of the study, the UK government, in a statement on June 15, 2004, stated: “Whilst it may be feasible to resettle the islands in the short term, the costs of maintaining long-term inhabitation are likely to be prohibitive. Even in the short term, natural events such as periodic flooding from storms and seismic activity are likely to make life difficult for a resettled population… Human interference within the atolls, however well managed, is likely to exacerbate stress on the marine and terrestrial environment and will accelerate the effects of global warming. Thus, resettlement is likely to become less feasible over time.” 

The 2015 KPMG report differed from the earlier 2002 study in one significant respect: whereas the 2002 study ruled out Diego Garcia as a resettlement site, the KPMG one did not. As it happens, its conclusion that resettlement was economically feasible was largely premised on this. A later report by another consulting firm, Whitebridge Hospitality Ltd., was also commissioned to explore the prospect of tourism and yachting to help support a resettled Chagossian population. After visiting 14 islands of the Chagos archipelago, the KPMG report noted that out of these, only three could be used for resettlement – Diego Garcia, Ile du Coin and Boddam. Other islands such as Pierre and Eagle – which were inhabited until the 1930s – were identified as candidates for later resettlement. The KPMG study estimated that Diego Garcia could accommodate a resettled population of between 1,000 and 2,000 people; Ile du Coin around 60, and Boddam, 63 people. 

The report laid out three options for resettlement: the first being a relatively large-scale resettlement of about 1,500 people; the second a medium-scale resettlement of about 500, and the third a small-scale resettlement of 150. Out of these, the report outlined that small-scale or medium-scale resettlement were the most likely options, provided that these populations would be resettled on Diego Garcia, and using already existing air, naval and water infrastructure built by the US there. Despite this, the report estimated that resettling 500 people would still cost £106.9 million over four years, and for 150 people, £62.9 million over three years. Put another way, to resettle 150 people, it would cost an average of £402,000 per person and spending up to £4.7 million each year to sustain such a population. 

Such a resettlement, it continued, should be focused on eastern Diego Garcia rather than the outlying islands, where building infrastructure such as a port or runway would have significant environmental and financial costs. This option, however, was drawn up by the KPMG assuming that the UK would continue to hold the islands. With Mauritius looking to spearhead and study resettlement, it will be up to Port Louis to negotiate with the US to allow resettlement on the islands.

3) Small-scale and symbolic 

While resettlement has come to figure prominently in the politics surrounding the Chagos, in reality such a resettlement is most likely to be a largely symbolic, small-scale affair. Following the release of the KPMG report that ruled resettlement of the Chagos to be possible, at a meeting of the UK’s NSC on February 25, 2015, it was noted that it was easy to see “… the whole thing escalating and getting involved in building runways and harbours, and accommodation blocks, while struggling to attract hotels and tourism, and finding ourselves committed to indefinite social security support because of a lack of job opportunities”. If the UK baulked at the costs of even a small-scale resettlement, it is hard to imagine Mauritius, a small-island state with a fragile developing economy, contemplating anything more than a symbolic resettlement. Particularly when it has historically struggled to build infrastructure and provide services on its other outer islands such as Rodrigues and Agalega. Anything more than a symbolic resettlement would also pose problems for Mauritius’ commitment in Lisbon to turn the Chagos into its own marine-protected area, which was reiterated in the 2023-2024 Budget as well.

This is the inherent paradox in the resettlement debate: the smaller and more economically viable the Chagos resettlement plans are, the less attractive the prospect becomes for the Mauritian Chagossians, who are the prime candidates for the resettlement scheme. And the Chagossians’ expectations are high; as part of its study, the KPMG in 2015 also sounded out the CRG and 190 Mauritian Chagossians. Most wanted to resettle in Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos or Salomon. Although the Chagossians said they wanted modern facilities and lifestyles similar to what they have become accustomed to in Mauritius, the KPMG study warned that “the low number of resettlers might be an insufficient critical mass to warrant the inclusion of certain facilities and high-skilled employment opportunities. A small-scale resettlement with low-skilled job opportunities may be of little or no interest to Chagossians”. 

Out of the Mauritian Chagossians, the KPMG spoke to, half were elderly and already retired, while the working-age Chagossians were working either as electricians, masons, maids, watchmen, blacksmiths, lorry drivers and storekeepers. Skills not needed to recreate a pristine settlement centred around coconut cultivation that the Chagos islands once were, but perhaps attractive to secure employment on the US base. Anything more than a symbolic return would depend on the appetite of the US to accommodate and employ Chagossians on Diego Garcia itself, and its willingness to put its infrastructure at their disposal. Much the same results came out of a similar survey of 832 Chagossians – also conducted in 2015 – by the UK government, 67 percent of whom were in Mauritius. Only a quarter said they would resettle in the Chagos, while 67 percent said they would consider resettlement only under certain conditions, and 70 percent said that they would seek employment on the US base.

For the Mauritian government, such a paradox – insisting on the theoretical right of resettling the Chagos while in practice the majority are not really willing to do so – should come as little surprise. In September 1975, the Mauritian government came up with a similar scheme to resettle the Chagossians who had made their way to the island of Agalega where they would work – as they did on the Chagos islands – in coconut cultivation. The plan received the enthusiastic backing of then-US President Gerald Ford who saw it as a way to resolve the Chagossian issue. But the whole plan collapsed when, out of the 421 Chagossian families who were in Mauritius, only eight actually wanted to go. Once in Mauritius, most preferred to stay. Or between 2000 and 2004, when there was no legal barrier to resettlement on the Chagos, most Mauritian Chagossians and Chagossian groups preferred to go to the UK when London started giving out passports as from 2002 rather than push to return to the Chagos. Any resettlement of the Chagos is thus most likely to be more of a politically symbolic exercise rather than a restoration of the past.