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| Serious questions over
sea boundaries between Maldives and British Indian Ocean Territory 20 December 2007
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea only islands sustaining human habitation are entitled to maritime zones. Rocks, reefs and uninhabited islands are excluded. The only inhabited part of the BIOT administration area is the atoll of Diego Garcia which the UK leases to the US government as a military base. The Diego Garcia atoll is more than 12 nautical miles from the submerged areas and low islands of the BIOT group. Exclusive of Diego Garcia, BIOT was uninhabited according to the UK, and the US base's population are not legally BIOT citizens. Under these circumstances, Maldives would have a strong argument to extend its Extended Economic Zone (EEZ) the full 200 nautical miles southwards from its territorial waters baseline around heavily populated Addu atoll. Unlike many other UK possessions, BIOT territorial waters only extend for 3 nautical miles and it is from this baseline that a 200 nautical mile EEZ is claimed by the UK government. Maldives' problems with a claim from BIOT and the US Diego Garcia base were raised by ex-attorney-general and now opposition figure, Hassan Saeed, who told a rally of opposition parties in Male' that the regime 'had failed to contest a claim by the UK Government to all waters within a two hundred mile radius of a British base on Diego Garcia, which intrudes into Maldivian waters by forty square miles'. His speech was reported in English by Minivan News and prompted a response from the regime's information minister who said the government had informed the UN of its intention to contest the claim on November 29, one day before the deadline expired. 'Now the Maldives has to make the claim by May 2009.'
The details of these sea claims have not been explained, and the Minivan News report did not explain that territorial sea claims, (12 nautical miles in the case of the Maldives archipelago; 3 nautical miles for the BIOT archipelago) form the baselines for the further 200 nautical miles of each archipelago's EEZ claims. Where these claims overlap, the usual solution is to divide equally the distance between the two competing EEZ claims. This is what was done in the case of the boundary between Addu and BIOT. Due to Diego Garcia's position in the far south of BIOT, a 200 nautical mile claim from the base itself would not reach the present agreed boundary halfway between BIOT's northern boundary and Addu atoll in southern Maldives. The situation is further complicated by protests from Mauritius, which does not recognise BIOT. Mauritius claims full sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago and its maritime zones. As well, the Ilois who were driven from Chagos in the 1960s and 1970s by the British and Americans, have just won the right to return to the archipelago. They have not been consulted about the sea boundaries. The United States, who are only renting in the area (while reserving the right to build and torture locally, and bomb elswhere) are opposing the Ilois' right of return. The complexities around BIOT's maritime zones are the product of the actions of the UK and USA in the Chagos archipelago since the 1960s when the decision was made to pretend that Chagos was uninhabited. As long as the jurisdiction of the UK and USA in the Chagos archipelago remains legally dubious, the Maldives should exercise great care in making any binding boundary agreements along its southern EEZ. |
Maldives Culture is an independent internet magazine of Maldive cultural issues.
Editors and translators: Michael O'Shea and Fareesha Abdulla, Australia
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