Ricerc@Sapienza

This chapter aims at answering the question of the contribution of the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration to the interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In applying to an Arbitral Tribunal convened pursuant to Part XV UNCLOS in 2011, Mauritius alleged that the United Kingdom was not entitled to unilaterally declare the Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Islands and that, in any event, the Area was incompatible with the UNCLOS.

The author examines the ICJ judgment rendered in the case concerning Maritime Delimitation in the Indian Ocean with a two-fold objective. First, the decision is one of the rare occasions on which the Court examined a reservation to its jurisdiction based on a preexisting agreement to pursue alternative means of dispute settlement, and provides a good starting point to study one of the most common kinds of reservation to optional clause declarations.