This week Imogen Saunders chairs a conversation with Douglas Guilfoyle and Ntina Tzouvala about the deal, announced on 3 October 2024 between Mauritius and the UK which transfers sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This deal – once thought inconceivable – has caused a great deal of commentary in the international legal community. We delve into the issues and why death, taxes, and US bases are (international) life's only certainties.

Recommendations! From Douglas:

Articles by Douglas and Philippa Webb on the Chagos litigation in https://law.unimelb.edu.au/mjil/issues/issue-archive/213 ;

Philippe Sands, The Last Colony, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/14/the-last-colony-by-philippe-sands-review-britains-chagos-islands-shame ;

From Ntina:

Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, https://www.penguin.com.au/books/how-to-hide-an-empire-9781473545335

Tom Frost and CRG Murray, The Mists of Time: Intertemporality and Self-Determination's Territorial Integrity Rule in the ICJ's Chagos Advisory Opinion, https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/5034695/Frost-and-Murray-Final-Approval-28.07.2024-For-PL-without-Track-1.pdf.

Music: Sam Barsh, Oils of Au Lait