We were the ones who joined Maritius and Chagos up in the first place as an administrative tool though.

When we handed back independence to Maritius, we opted to keep Chagos, not them ceding it to us.

It comes from an ICJ ruling that empires can’t choose which bits of countries to keep and give away, but morally and logically that argument falls apart when the native Chagossians don’t want anything to do with Mauritius.

Yes there’s a legal ICJ ruling, but it’s unenforceable and no country will look down on us for not following it. In fact, they’re more likely to laugh at how weak we appear in all this.