The agreement ends decades of dispute over Britain’s last African colony, from which thousands of people were forcibly evicted, while maintaining a key U.S.-British military base there.

The U.K. has agreed to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, in a deal to secure the future of a strategically important U.

After years of negotiations, the UK is giving up its sovereignty over a cluster of strategically important Indian Ocean islands. The move has led to criticism from Britain's Conservative opposition and some local Indigenous groups.