The President’s Office has officially established a committee tasked with expediting and supervising the examination of the prior government’s approach to the legal dispute between the Maldives and Mauritius concerning their respective maritime boundary claims.
This committee, comprised of representatives from the Attorney General’s Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Maldives National Defence Force, will be under the leadership of former Attorney General Mohamed Anil. Their primary responsibility will be to scrutinise the former government’s legal stance in representing the nation’s interests during the proceedings at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).
The Attorney General’s Office has already commenced the pre-appeal review process to assess whether the handling of the dispute, which concluded on April 23, 2023, appropriately safeguarded the sovereignty of the Maldives in relation to Mauritian interests.
The ITLOS ruling resulted in the Maldives gaining a larger share of the disputed waters, amounting to 92,563 square meters. However, it also entailed a loss of approximately 45,331 square meters from the Maldives’ traditionally claimed Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Dr Mohamed Muizzu, the current President, who was in the opposition at the time, contended that the Maldives had “lost” a substantial portion of its maritime territory to Mauritius following the ruling. This assertion played a pivotal role in Muizzu’s presidential campaign and formed part of his initial 100-day agenda to initiate the process of reclaiming the “lost” maritime territory.
One of the principal arguments put forth by the then-opposition centred on President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s government changing its stance on the United Nations General Assembly resolution titled “Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965.”
This was once again reiterated with an original copy of a previously leaked letter from President Solih to the Mauritian Prime Minister. The current government alleges that this shift was linked to a broader agreement between the two governments regarding the ITLOS ruling.
However, President Solih’s team and his Attorney General, Ibrahim Riffath, have refuted these claims, clarifying to the parliament that the former President’s letter merely informed the Prime Minister of Mauritius about a change in the Maldives’ position, expressing support for Mauritius’ sovereignty over the Chagos. This change in position, they emphasised, had no bearing on the ITLOS case.
In response to the leaked letter, the then-administration reiterated that the change in the United Nations vote would have “no impact on the legal position taken by the Maldives” in the ITLOS case and the submission made to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) in 2010.
While the President’s Office acknowledged that the tone of the letter may have reflected broader discussions between the two governments, there is currently no official record of any meetings or documents corroborating this assertion.