What happened to AG Office’s task of appealing ITLOS ruling regarding Maldives' EEZ?

The incumbent administration of President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu kicked off its first 14 weeks with quite a theatrical flourish, ordering the Attorney General’s Office to pull out all the stops and challenge the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruling.

This legal boundary dispute over the waters between the Maldives and the Chagos Archipelago was branded an absolute emergency. The current government claimed the Solih administration’s previous policy was a direct assault on the Maldivian Constitution and laws, actively sabotaging the country's national interests.

Mystery of ghost committees and expert panels

By December 2023, the President's Office was happily feeding the public hopeful updates, claiming the Attorney General’s Office had already rolled up its sleeves to dissect the tribunal's decision and hunt for legal loopholes.

We were promised that relevant paperwork was being gathered and reviewed, while a team of local and top-tier international legal minds was supposedly picking apart the previous government's legal stance and behavior.

Because this was treated as a matter of supreme national gravity, the government proudly trumpeted the creation of a specialized committee by the AG to orchestrate the entire operation.

This group featured former AG Mohamed Anil, Colonel Ahmed Mujthaba from the Ministry of Defence, and Ahmed Shiaan, the Multilateral Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, since that grand opening announcement, the government has maintained a flawless, stone-cold silence regarding what this committee has actually achieved.

A bureaucratic black hole

Adding to the pile of promises, the public was told the AG would draft an all-inclusive, massive report for both the President and the People’s Majlis.

This document was supposed to lay out exactly how the Solih administration’s legal strategy supposedly violated the Constitution and sold out the nation's highest interests.

Fast forward to the flashy Republic Day stage in November 2024, where President Muizzu confidently declared that his administration was working around the clock to reclaim what he termed the lost maritime territory.

While actual, concrete details were conveniently left out, the President took the opportunity to viciously bash the previous government, claiming a massive chunk of Maldivian ocean had been handed over in complete defiance of constitutional boundaries and without a single shred of parliamentary discussion.

He heavily lamented that the messy nature of the previous administration's choices had made fixing the problem an absolute nightmare.

Hidden diplomats and letters to nowhere

During that same Republic Day speech, the President dropped the news that ever since he took power, a lone official from the AG Office had been stationed at the United Nations, backed by a legal team working tirelessly on the case day in and day out. Naturally, when journalists tried to get some clarity on what this mysterious UN-based official has actually been doing or what progress they have made, they were met with a total lack of specific details.

At the exact same event, the President noted that when reports surfaced about the United Kingdom holding talks to hand Chagos over to Mauritius, the Maldivian government fired off a formal letter to the UK emphasizing the deep historical bonds between the Maldives and Chagos.

Later on, at the inaugural sitting of the 20th People’s Majlis, President Muizzu announced that the government was officially retracting the letter former President Solih had sent to the former Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, back on 22 August 2022. To double down, he also announced a decision to form an official Commission of Inquiry under Article 115(g) of the Constitution to dig into the previous administration's handling of the tribunal case.

Reality checks from global superpowers

By 2 March 2026, during a press briefing at the President’s Office, the President was cornered about the glaring lack of visible progress in winning back this supposedly lost ocean territory.

President Muizzu deflected by asserting that efforts were still very much alive with the British government, highlighting two formal letters and a phone call with the British Prime Minister, while promising that documentation would eventually be handed over to international bodies when the time is right.

Despite all the aggressive rhetoric since the President took the oath of office, the public has seen zero actual progress beyond a toothless refusal to recognize Mauritius' sovereignty over Chagos and a stubborn rejection of the tribunal's boundary decision.

Those letters sent to the UK have apparently vanished into thin air, receiving no official acknowledgment or reply. On the flip side, both the United States and the United Kingdom have actively contradicted President Muizzu’s grandiose narrative. The UK firmly maintains that the Chagos situation is strictly a bilateral issue to be sorted with Mauritius, while U.S. President Donald Trump has dropped indirect warnings of military intervention if any outside party dares to mess with the Chagos lease setup or its ongoing operations.

To wrap it all up, a grand total of 935 days has ticked away since the AG Office was handed the monumental task of reclaiming the maritime territory and Chagos.

Despite deploying a special UN representative, assembling a high-level committee, promising an inquiry report, hiring international legal hotshots, and bragging about diplomatic chats with the UK, the scoreboard remains at an absolute zero.