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In its judgment on the preliminary objections, delivered on 28 January 2021 in the Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Mauritius and Maldives in the Indian Ocean, the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea established its jurisdiction on the premise that Mauritius'sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is undisputable. To assess the legal status of the Chagos Archipelago, the judges referred to the determinations made by the International Court of Justice in its 2019 advisory opinion and by the General Assembly in its resolution 73/295. While international law scholars paid much attention to the first of these instruments, the present inquiry aims at clarifying the legal effect attributed by the Special Chamber to resolution 73/295, taking into account the Assembly's functions on decolonization and the authoritative value of the acts which it adopts within this remit. Considering that General Assembly resolutions defining the legal status of a territory with respect to decolonization may constitute a “general recognition” of an unlawful territorial situation, it is argued that resolution 73/295 represents the only legal instrument capable of reconciling the decision rendered by the Special Chamber with the formal categories of international law.
