Parliament Speaker and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has expressed concern over the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (ITLOS) ruling on the maritime dispute between the Maldives and Mauritius.
The maritime dispute between Mauritius and the Maldives came after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in September 2019 declared the Chagos Archipelago south of the Maldives a sovereign territory of Mauritius. The ICJ ruling came after Mauritius submitted for an ICJ recommendation on whether Chagos was under its jurisdiction.
Following the ICJ ruling, Mauritius requested the ITLOS to lay the equidistance measurements to measure both countries' outer limits from Blenheim Reef. The disputed overlapping area between the Maldives and Mauritius was 95,000 square kilometers. The Maldives requested not to consider the reef in calculating the equidistance as it was not part of Mauritius' coastline.
In its ruling on Friday, ITLOS said the overlapping area must be divided using the equidistance method and that the no point of the Blenheim reef may not be used to draw the equidistance line. This accords 47232 sq kilometers, the larger portion of the overlapping area, to the Maldives and 45,331 sq kilometers of the disputed area to Mauritius. Therefore, the Maldives has secured an additional area of about 4,600 sq kilometers from the disputed territory of the two countries.
Following the ruling, pro-government parliament members have been congratulating President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. In a message sent to the Whatsapp group of parliament members, Nasheed criticized the members' actions and accused members of supporting the ITLOS decision to deceive the people. The members were speaking against the oath they took, he said. He described the loss of a territorial area of the Maldives as a political affair and said it was a great shame that members were attempting to mislead the public.
Earlier today, Nasheed posted a tweet stating that the Maldives has lost part of its territorial waters after the Maldives ceded sovereignty over the Chagos islands.
"I think it is better for the Maldives not to accept this [ruling by ITLOS]," Nasheed tweeted.
