British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos islands)

The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is a UK Overseas Territory situated halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia and comprising the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, itself comprising over 1,000 individual islands. It was originally part of Mauritius, but separated into its own territory by Britain in 1965. From 1968 to 1973, the native Chagossians were expelled from the land to aid the construction of a US-UK airbase, and have been fighting to return since, gaining support from the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. In 2024, the UK government under Prime Minister Kier Starmer announced it would return the islands to Mauritius but retain the base, located on the largest island, Diego Garcia.