[10][11] In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that the United Kingdom did not have sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and that the administration of the archipelago should be handed over "as rapidly as possible" to Mauritius.

[15] As the act is extraterritorial, it restricts the abilities of Chagossians both in Mauritius and around the world to voice their opinions on the status of the Chagos islands, including on the 2024 agreement.

[16] In 1793, when the first successful colony was founded on Diego Garcia, coconut plantations were established on many of the atolls and isolated islands of the archipelago.

[18] The UK also falsely labelled the Chagossians, whose ancestral links to the territory go back to the late 18th century, as “transient workers” to avoid breaching International Law.

[19] On 16 April 1971, the United Kingdom issued a policy called BIOT Immigration Ordinance #1 which made it a criminal offence for those without military clearance to be on the islands without a permit.

[20] Between 1967 and 1973, the Chagossians, then numbering over 1,000 people, were expelled by the British government, first to the island of Peros Banhos, 100 miles (160 km) away from their homeland, and then, in 1973, to Mauritius.

[20] The Chagossians owned no real property on the islands and lived in housing provided for farm workers by the absentee landowners of the plantations.

On 22 October 2008, the Law Lords reached a decision on the appeal made by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Miliband.

[10] In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that the United Kingdom did not have sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and that the administration of the archipelago should be handed over "as rapidly as possible" to Mauritius.

[12] The United Nations General Assembly then voted to give Britain a six-month deadline to begin the process of handing-over the islands.

[32] On 1 December 2010, a leaked US Embassy London diplomatic cable dating back to 2009[33] exposed British and US calculations in creating the marine nature reserve.

Armed with the WikiLeaks revelations, the Chagossians launched an appeal, seeking a judgement that the reserve was unlawfully aimed at preventing them from returning home.

[36] Despite the contents of his cable being known—"a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago's former residents"—Roberts denied, when questioned in court, that there was an "ulterior motive" behind the reserve's establishment.

[30] It emerged in 2014 that—for three decades, in violation of environmental rules—the American navy had dumped hundreds of tonnes of sewage and waste water into a protected lagoon on Diego Garcia.

[38] In response to the revelations, the chair of the Chagos Refugees Group UK Branch, Sabrina Jean, noted: When we Chagossians lived on our islands, the seas and lagoons were pristine.…For many years we have been pressing BIOT to conduct an environmental audit of the effects of the US occupation.

[35]On 5 March 2012, a petition was launched on We the People section of the whitehouse.gov website in order to ask the White House in the United States to consider the Chagos case.

Facing social, cultural, and economic despair, the Chagossians now live as a marginalized community in Mauritius and Seychelles and have not been allowed to return home.

The recent passing of the oldest member of the exiled population underscores the urgent need to improve the human rights of the Chagossians.

In the decades following the resettlement of Chagossians in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United Kingdom has taken numerous steps to compensate former inhabitants for the hardships they endured, including cash payments and eligibility for British citizenship.