Professor Philippe Sands KC and Remi Reichhold appeared before a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on behalf of Mauritius in the Dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius/Maldives)
The hearing on the merits took place between 17 and 24 October at ITLOS in Hamburg, Germany. The Special Chamber is tasked with delimiting the maritime boundary between Mauritius (the Chagos Archipelago) and Maldives.
The hearing follows the Special Chamber’s Judgment of 28 January 2021, by which it dismissed Maldives’ Preliminary Objections and held that: (i) the ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965has “legal effect” and “considerable implications” for the legal status of the Chagos Archipelago; (ii) Mauritius is the coastal State in respect of the Chagos Archipelago for the purposes of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, even before the process of decolonisation is completed; and (iii) the “continued claim of the United Kingdom to sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago cannot be considered anything more than ‘a mere assertion’” and that such a “mere assertion” is “not sufficient to prove the existence of a dispute”.
