Maldives deploys military after Muizzu rejects maritime boundary with Mauritius

In his address at the opening of parliament on Thursday, Muizzu rejected the maritime boundary drawn between the Maldives and Chagos by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in 2023, which divided overlapping 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones. He reversed the previous administration's recognition of Mauritius's sovereignty over the archipelago and asserted a Maldives counter-claim.

"Moreover, with reference to the archipelagic base points stated in the Maldives maritime zones law, I declare that the Maldives' exclusive economic zone is the territory currently stated in the law, including the relinquished ocean territory, and announce it in the presence of you honourable members of the Majlis," Muizzu said. 

The government will revise the Maritime Zones Act of 1996 to this effect, he added, citing an amendment made to the constitution in November 2024 to require a law approved by a three-quarters majority of parliament to make any changes to the Maldives EEZ or territorial waters.

Following the president's speech, the defence ministry announced that the Coast Guard ship Dharumavantha and military drones have been deployed to monitor the southern waters. The Maldives National Defence Force would "continue to take all necessary measures" to safeguard the area in line with the president's directive, the ministry said. 

The ministry cited the 1976 Gulf of Mannar tri-junction agreement with India and Sri Lanka, which established the Maldives' 200-nautical-mile EEZ as the legal basis for the deployment.

The surveillance operation launched on Sunday will cover "a 200 nautical mile area from the Maldives' southern baseline," the MNDF said.

Muizzu accused the previous administration of deliberately forfeiting Maldivian territory by engaging in the ITLOS adjudication when Mauritius sought to demarcate the maritime boundary.

After the change of government in November 2023, the Attorney General's Office formed a three-member committee to review the case and "to recover the forfeited territory from the Maldivian sea," Muizzu said. Based on the advice of international experts, Attorney General Ahmed Usham presented a paper to the cabinet on January 25, 2026, Muizzu revealed. Legal proceedings have since been initiated, he added.

He did not disclose any further details. ITLOS judgments are final and legally binding under international law, but there is no enforcement mechanism. China has ignored a 2016 ruling against its South China Sea claims for nearly a decade. However, unlike Beijing, which refused to participate in those proceedings, the Maldives is a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Muizzu's announcements come amid mounting international pressure on the UK's planned handover of Chagos to its former colony Mauritius. President Donald Trump has reversed US support for the agreement, calling it "an act of great stupidity" that China and Russia could exploit. In early January, London-based Chagossians protested against being shut out of decisions about their homeland.

In an interview with Newsweek published on Sunday, Muizzu offered to let the US maintain its military presence on Diego Garcia if sovereignty is transferred to the Maldives. "President Trump clearly seeks to protect and secure the continuation of the use of Chagos for the U.S. Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia," Muizzu said, adding that he would "seek approval through our parliament as per our constitution, to facilitate the continuation of the status quo."

Muizzu argued the Maldives was better placed than Mauritius to steward the islands, citing proximity – 310 miles from Malé compared to 1,300 miles from Port Louis – and the country's experience managing marine conservation areas. "We have never overpopulated, overdeveloped, or under protected marine conservation zones within our current borders – and we would not do so should those borders be expanded to include Chagos," he said.

The Chagossian diaspora, forcibly removed by Britain in the 1960s to make way for the US base, "must have a voice and a say in this debate," Muizzu said, noting their partial Maldivian heritage.

"The Maldives has historical connections to the Chagos Islands – known to us as Foalhavahi – which lie south of Maldivian waters," Muizzu told the Daily Express, a British tabloid, last month, "These connections are based on documental evidence, and we believe gives the Maldives a greater claim than any other country."

The Chagos question has been politically charged in the Maldives since the ITLOS judgment in April 2023, which apportioned 47,232 square kilometres to the Maldives and 45,331 square kilometres to Mauritius.

At the centre of the controversy was the Solih administration's reversal of the Maldives’ decades-long neutral stance in the dispute between the UK and Mauritius. Successive governments maintained the stand that borders could not be determined until the sovereignty dispute was resolved. 

In February 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled that continuing British occupation was illegal, after which the UN General Assembly endorsed the advisory opinion with 116 countries calling on Britain to cede Chagos to Mauritius within six months. But the Maldives voted against the non-binding resolution – along with the UK, US, Australia, Israel, and Hungary – on the grounds that it could undermine a 2010 bid to establish the outer limits of the continental shelf between the Maldives and Chagos.

Bolstered by the ICJ opinion, Mauritius asked ITLOS to delimit the maritime boundary in the overlapping EEZs. In his opening statement in October 2022, Attorney General Ibrahim Riffath revealed that President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih had informed the Mauritius prime minister in August 2022 that the Maldives would vote in favour of the next General Assembly resolution on the return of Chagos to Mauritius.

The revelation of Solih's letter ignited a political firestorm. The opposition accused the Solih administration of "treason" and "selling" Maldivian territorial waters. Former President Abdulla Yameen alleged bribery, while former President Mohamed Nasheed called for the Maldives to reject the ruling.

The Solih administration insisted that “support to Mauritius’ claim on sovereignty over Chagos” was unrelated to the tribunal case concerning the southern EEZ, “whose boundaries have never been, up until the present moment, determined by the Law of Sea Convention,” and dismissed the opposition’s allegations about the president violating the constitutional requirement to seek parliamentary approval for territorial changes. That only applied to territorial boundaries of 12 miles from the coastline, whereas decisions concerning EEZ boundaries were “well within the mandate of government”.

The UK formally handed sovereignty of Chagos to Mauritius in May 2025, retaining control of the Diego Garcia military base through a 99-year lease.

Muizzu announced that the government will rescind Solih's letter. 

The letter "adversely affected Maldivian sovereign territory," international experts advised the government, he told parliament, announcing his intention to establish an "Office on Maldivian Territory" to determine coordinates and baselines.

As the experts also concluded that the previous government's decisions in the matter "caused irreparable major damage to the Maldivian state," Muizzu announced the formation of a Commission of Enquiry to question former officials and take legal action if necessary. 

The government has since formally communicated the decision to withdraw the August 2022 letter to Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, the President's Office said. "The President’s letter notes that the sudden and unexplained change in the position made by the previous administration, midway through the ITLOS proceedings, had an adverse and detrimental effect on the Maldives’ interests in the case. Furthermore, the government notes that this shift was unreasonable, unjustified, and made without due process," it added.

In his address, Muizzu reasserted the Maldives claim to sovereignty over Chagos. Maldivians knew of the Chagos islands centuries before colonial powers arrived in the Indian Ocean, he said, describing the southern archipelago as "a place in the Maldives' natural territory that Maldivian ancestors named in the Dhivehi language." He cited mentions in Maldivian navigation documents, a long history of Maldivians "going fishing there day-to-day with ease," and a 16th century patent by a Maldivian sultan claiming ownership over the islands. 

After the United Kingdom decided to hand over Chagos to Mauritius, the Maldives formally objected to the British government on November 8, 2024 and January 18, 2026, Muizzu said, adding that he had brought the matter to the attention of Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy during a phone call on December 15, 2025, and sought talks on the issue.

The Maldives has also raised concerns about potential damage to fisheries and tourism from the Mauritian government's policy on the use of the Chagos EEZ. This has been communicated to both Mauritius and the International Union for Nature Conservation, Muizzu said.

Sovereignty for Mauritius despite the much larger distance than the Maldives was a legacy of arbitrarily drawn colonial boundaries,  Professor Payam Akhavan – senior counsel of the Maldives legal team at ITLOS – told the press in October 2022. 

A Maldives claim would be "a non-starter" because of the ICJ judgment in 2019, he said.

Muizzu cited several pieces of evidence:

Muizzu was likely referring to exiled King Hassan IX describing himself – nearly 463 years ago in Cochin – as the "owner of the Maldives islands, the three patanas of Suaadhoo and the seven islands of Pullobay." The three patanas were the southernmost Maldivian atolls of Huvadhoo, Fuvahmulah and Addu. Pullobay most likely referred to the Chagos atoll known in Dhivehi as Foalhavahi, according to local historian Ahmed Najih.

But historians have questioned its veracity.

"While King Hassan declared his dominion over Foalhavahi in the 16th century, questions arise as to why no record of this area exists in Maldivian ancient records," local historian Ahmed Najih wrote in 2022. "More questions arise when you consider that the Maldivian territory was called Kela-addu and when Maliku was part of the Maldives, it was described as Maliku-addu."

Maldivian territory was traditionally described from the northernmost to the southernmost points, starting from Maliku (before it became part of India) and ending in Addu with no mention of Chagos.

Historians agree that Maldivians knew about the Chagos islands. Oral traditions speak of fisherfolk who got stranded at sea and ended up in Foalhavahi.

Nevertheless, the actual location of Foalhavahi remained in question.

"Hoḷḷavai [Foalhavahi], according to Southern Maldivian old men, was a generic name for all the islands and island groups South and Southwest of the Maldives. These included not only the Chagos, but also Seychelles, Mauritius & Reunion and Rodrigues, all of which were uninhabited until as late as the 16th or 17th century," wrote Spanish historian Xavier Romero Frias.

"According to the island lore it is clear that Maldivians only visited those remote islands by accident and that they by no means endeavored to settle there," he concluded in his book The Maldivian Islanders.

The Blenheim Reef issue – a technical disagreement over whether a semi-submerged reef could be used as a base-point for EEZ calculation – was decided in favour of the Maldives.

In the final allocation, the Maldives received 47,232 square kilometres. Mauritius received 45,331 sq km, a ratio of 1:0.960 in favour of the Maldives. Mauritius's claim to continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles (an additional 22,298 sq km) was rejected.

The parties had agreed on 95 percent of the 92,000 sq km overlapping area before the judgment. The five percent disagreement became the focus of political controversy.

The government celebrated. Professor Akhavan, senior counsel for the Maldives, called it a "great victory for Maldives." But the opposition was furious. Social media lamented the "loss of 44,000 square km." A rally was staged in Malé. Leaders vowed to impeach and imprison President Solih. Acting opposition leader Abdul Raheem Abdulla called on police and military to topple the government.

"Prior to boundary determination, Maldives only controlled 12 nautical miles. Now we have 200 miles," President Solih said, as his Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid stressed: "No Maldivian government has ever claimed sovereignty over Chagos."

The question of whether the neighbouring state is the UK or Mauritius was settled when the tribunal rejected objections raised by the Maldives, which challenged ITLOS jurisdiction to proceed to border delimitation despite the unresolved sovereignty dispute.

Professor Akhavan explained that the president's decision to vote in favour of the ICJ opinion at the General Assembly was "the natural consequence" of the tribunal's binding judgment that Mauritius should be considered the rightful owner of Chagos "for the purposes of drawing a maritime boundary."

Despite negotiations with both the UK and Mauritius, the lack of clarity in the past had precluded a boundary agreement such as the ones signed with India and Sri Lanka in the 1970s.

1814-1968 - UK controls Chagos as part of Mauritius colonial administration

1965 - UK separates Chagos administration from Mauritius to create British Indian Ocean Territory

1966 - UK leases Diego Garcia to US for 50 years (in exchange for US$14 million discount on Polaris missile systems)

1968 - Mauritius gains independence without Chagos archipelago

Late 1960s-early 1970s - UK forcibly removes 1,500-2,000 Chagossians to make way for US military base on Diego Garcia

1970s - Maldives signs maritime boundary agreements with India and Sri Lanka

1982 - Maldives becomes signatory to UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)

1992 - Maldives and UK reach technical-level agreement using equidistant rule for maritime boundary; draft agreement finalised but never signed

1996 - Maldives passes Maritime Zones Act declaring 200-nautical-mile EEZ from archipelagic baselines

2000 - Maldives ratifies UNCLOS

2009 - Mauritius submits preliminary information to UN Commission on Limits of Continental Shelf, claiming 200 nautical mile EEZ around Chagos

July 2010 - Maldives submits claim for extended continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles, including overlapping Chagos territory

March 2011 - Mauritius officially protests Maldivian claim as encroachment on Chagos zone

2011 - President Nasheed visits Mauritius; both countries agree on diplomatic solution for overlapping continental shelf areas. No follow-up occurs.

2017 - UN General Assembly seeks opinion from International Court of Justice on Chagos; Maldives does not file intervention under Yameen administration

February 2019 - ICJ rules UK's continued occupation of Chagos illegal, violates international law

May 2019 - UN General Assembly adopts resolution calling for complete decolonisation of Mauritius by returning Chagos

2019 - Mauritius files case at ITLOS over maritime boundary delimitation

January 28, 2021 - ITLOS rejects all five Maldives preliminary objections, including challenge to jurisdiction based on unresolved sovereignty dispute

August 2022 - President Solih privately informs Mauritius PM of decision to support sovereignty claim 

October 2022 - At ITLOS in Hamburg, Attorney General Ibrahim Riffath publicly announces Maldives will vote in favour of next UN resolution supporting Mauritius sovereignty

April 28, 2023 - ITLOS delivers judgment: Maldives receives 47,232 sq km; Mauritius receives 45,331 sq km

November 2023 - Muizzu assumes office after defeating Solih on campaign promise to reverse ITLOS decision

October 2024 - UK announces agreement to transfer Chagos sovereignty to Mauritius

November 2024 - Muizzu reveals in Republic Day address that Maldives has sent letter to UK asserting historical claim to Chagos

May 22, 2025 - UK formally hands over Chagos sovereignty to Mauritius

January 20, 2026 - Trump reverses support for deal; Muizzu tells Express that Maldives has "strongest claim" to sovereignty

February 2026 - Muizzu rejects ITLOS boundary in parliament address; military deployed to southern waters