Addendum to the Rejoinder to UK FCDO Letter TO2025/31423: Subsequent Developments Affecting the Chagos Process

22 December 2025

Editorial Note: This addendum supplements the Rejoinder published on 22 December 2025 and records subsequent developments affecting the Chagos decolonisation process.

1. Purpose

This Addendum is issued to place on record subsequent international developments that have arisen following the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s letter of 11 November 2025 (Ref: TO2025/31423), and which materially affect the assumptions underlying that correspondence.

2. Intervention by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Following the FCDO’s letter, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has called for restraint in the implementation of the United Kingdom-Mauritius arrangement concerning the Chagos Archipelago, pending proper consideration of rights and participation.

This development is significant. CERD operates under a binding international human rights treaty and assesses compliance with obligations relating to inclusion, participation, and the prevention of discriminatory exclusion. Its intervention directly contradicts any suggestion that the Chagos process is settled, procedurally complete, or insulated from international scrutiny.

3. Manifest Evidence of a Legitimacy Deficit

In parallel, representatives of the Chagossian people have publicly declared a form of political organisation in exile, citing exclusion from decision-making processes affecting their homeland.

Without endorsing or contesting the legal status of such declarations, their emergence is itself indicative of a broader legitimacy deficit. Processes that result in affected peoples asserting exclusion cannot credibly be described as final or consensual decolonisation outcomes.

4. Implications for the Maldivian Position

These developments reinforce, rather than diminish, the concerns raised in the Rejoinder.

If affected peoples are publicly asserting exclusion, the continued exclusion of the Maldives – an affected State with historical, territorial, and maritime interests in the Chagos region – becomes even more legally and procedurally indefensible.

They underscore that the Chagos question remains open, contested, and procedurally incomplete, and that claims of closure based on advisory opinions, jurisdictional inferences, or geopolitical alignment are premature.

5. Conclusion

This Addendum is submitted to update the record and to clarify that subsequent developments have overtaken key assumptions underlying FCDO Ref TO2025/31423.

It is reiterated that any lawful and durable resolution of the Chagos question must be approached with restraint, inclusivity, and full respect for the rights of all affected peoples and States, in accordance with international law and the principles of decolonisation.

Signed

Abdulla Rasheed
Administrative Custodian
Pen for Rights – Maldivians for Chagos
Indian Ocean Decolonisation Initiative