In 1968 the "UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the islands" which equates to approximately £52m today[1]. At the very least, you would expect that Mauritius would have to pay this back. But, there is also the question of value. The islands, especially given the state of the world today, are probably worth much more than £52m from a strategic point of view.
> Mauritius prime minister Pravind Jugnauth has attempted to smooth things over by saying the country is prepared to reach an agreement with the US and UK to allow the Diego Garcia military base to continue to exist – presumably in return for a fat check each year - arguing that such an approach would "provide a higher degree of legal certainty" than the current situation.
Yes, that /is/ a presumption, but seems quite likely. I still think my above point about ownership stands. If a country sells an island, they surely also sell any claims to sovereignty too. Looking into it further though, it doesn't appear that the islands were sold, but that they were split off from the territory (along with some others too) to form another, the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius was compensated the £3m.
So, I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge, after all, the US, Canada, Australia, aren't all these countries also former colonies?
[1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ using 1965 as start year and 3,000,000 pounds as start value.
Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under more humane principles.
For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy, then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal framework?
In this particular case, the problems are well-documented.
> I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge
Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger.
That is a question a judge can answer differently depending on the circumstances of the deal. Was the buyer informed correctly about the consequences? Was the deal made under duress? Was the buyer legally mandated to perform the sale?
The diplomatic cable mentioned in ElReg's article is illustrative of the kind of circumstances the deal was made in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diplomatic_Cable_signed_b...
To quote a british official (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty...)
"in theory, there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues. The best solution of all might be Independence and detachment by agreement, although he could not of course commit the Colonial Secretary at this point. "
I presume you got the quoted statistic from the Chagos Islands info box on that Wikipedia page. If so, I'd urge you to scroll down just a little bit farther to learn the info that the rest of us read in the article. Here's a link to help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago#Sovereignty...
This isn't unique to tech startups. I live in Massachusetts and do not regularly think about what exactly happened to the Massachusett people. It was not great.
The UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has veto power on all substantive matters taken up by the Council.
Doesn't that mean that they can pretty much ignore anything the General Assembly or most other international bodies tell them to do, just like the United States, Russia, and China do, because actually enforcing anything usually involves something that ends up requiring some kind of action that will require Security Council approval?
The point of the UN is not to be a world government. It is to be a forum for the five major power victors of WWII to coordinate things.
Okay, that’s a bit flippant, but it’s mostly true.
There is a lot of discussion about how illogical it is that, for example, India or Japan aren’t permanent members and how the UN should be reformed. IMO this misses the point. If you made the structure more “fair”, the powerful countries would simply not bother participating. International relations are mostly based on power, not fairness.
I could set up a perfectly fair world government in my living room tomorrow, but it’s unlikely that anyone would follow its edicts.
To the extent it was true, that model got overturned due to Korea which demonstrated that it could not work and that the UN would fail utterly without a workaround for veto-induced paralysis; such a workaround was adopted in 1950 and has been used several times since (first notable use being to bypass the Anglo-French veto of a UN cease-fire and peacekeeping force in the Suez crisis in 1956.
> Doesn't that mean that they can pretty much ignore anything the General Assembly or most other international bodies tell them to do, just like the United States, Russia, and China do
No, the fact that they are world power backed up by the US and a number of other major powers in most things usually means that, though.
> because actually enforcing anything usually involves something that ends up requiring some kind of action that will require Security Council approval?
Facing the potential of Soviet veto producing a Security Council deadlock in the Korean War era, the US came up with a solution to that which was adopted in A/RES/377A (3 Nov 1950), the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, under which the General Assembly makes recommendations for coordinated action in the event of a Security Council deadlock. This has been invoked roughly a dozen times since, and effectively provides a General Assembly route around Security Council vetoes.
The first use outside the context of Korea (in the 1956 Suez crisis) was against a UK/France joint veto in the Security Council.
The UN involvement in the Korean War was authorized by Resolution 83[1] and Resolution 84[2] and the votes were held while the Soviet Union vetoed the security council because China's seat was held by the ROC, not PRC. 377A was a way to prevent vetoes from blocking future action in that and coming conflicts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci...
How is there anything illegal about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcC0RNsallc&t=48m00s
(In Japanese, enable subtitles with the [cc] button.)
“At the end of February, hoping to escape the chaos of America’s cryptography regulations, developers from corporations representing the cryptography business have gathered in Anguilla, in the Caribbean Sea. The Financial Cryptography Conference.
This island, which does not levy taxes on corporations is willing to lend a hand to the Cypherpunks and those companies in the cryptography business.
The Cypherpunks that have already arrived greet Sameer and his friends. They’ve all been asked to come by Cypherpunks member Vince Cate, a resident of the island.
Three years ago Vince left America’s west coast to move here, a place without any internet service. At that time he had a plan in mind.
Anguilla is a small island with a population of only 9000. A tourism industry which depends on resort customers from America and the sale of commemorative stamps are Anguilla’s primary sources of income. However revenue from tourism is sluggish compared to other islands in the area.
After arriving here the first thing Vince did was to preach to the Anguillan government about how wonderful the internet was. And in the end, even though the island was poor it was wired for the Internet.”
We have used it for many years at https://clara.io, but we are moving away from it back to .com for all new services.
But except of legal affairs the climate crisis is the next reason not to rely on this domain. If the humanity continues its course the ".io island" will soon be under water.
Czechoslovakia. cs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cs
Yugoslavia. yu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu
The most surprising one, IMO, is .oz, which was used for Australia. So, a top level code was changed even though nothing substantial happened to the country.
Since then a company called Afilias is running .io (they also run .org, .info among many others). Whoever maintains governance of the .io tld is separate from the actual infrastructure running .io. As long as the owners of .io want to keep cashing the checks then nothing will change as the whole operation is outsourced. This is similar to the island of tuvalu outsourcing all of .tv to verisign (they are the .com registry)
Source: I work in the domain industry
On the other hand, .su is still going strong
