标签： Africa

The United Kingdom has launched an informal review of its 2025 sovereignty agreement that would cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has confirmed, following renewed public criticism of the pact from US President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

The original deal, negotiated and signed under former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in May 2025, was designed to resolve a decades-long sovereignty dispute over the Indian Ocean archipelago. Under its terms, the UK would transfer full sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for a 99-year lease on the strategic UK-US military base located on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s largest island. The UK government initially projected the total net cost of the agreement at £3.4 billion, or roughly £101 million ($136 million) in annual payments to Mauritius, though political opponents have argued inflation-adjusted costs could reach as high as £35 billion, with additional risks of expanded Chinese influence in the region.

The agreement hit a deadlock in April of this year when Trump withdrew US support, forcing the Starmer administration to pause the deal indefinitely ahead of its parliamentary ratification. Streeting made clear in comments to BBC Breakfast on Wednesday that the review is a direct response to Washington’s opposition, noting that Trump’s recent public criticism clarified his unchanged stance on the unamended draft. “What President Trump said yesterday wasn’t new but I think it does provide absolute clarity that his position on this Chagos deal as currently drafted is not changing,” Streeting told reporters. “So we have to do more work with our American allies, with President Trump and his administration, to get the deal to a place where he can support it.”

The Diego Garcia base has long been viewed as one of the West’s most critical strategic assets in the Indian Ocean, giving UK and US military forces unmatched access to a region that has grown in geopolitical importance in recent decades. Successive UK prime ministers have held that the ongoing unresolved sovereignty dispute, which has backing from international courts, puts the long-term security of the base at risk. Streeting emphasized that the core priority of the ongoing review is to secure long-term stability and certainty for the base’s operations.

The renewed public scrutiny of the deal came during Trump’s first in-person meeting with current UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, where Trump publicly called the agreement “terrible” and stated the UK would revisit the terms. Burnham simply replied “Yep” during the exchange, and later clarified to reporters that his government inherited the negotiations and is committed to finding a workable resolution that protects the base’s future. “It’s critical to safeguard the future of the base, and that matters to us for security reasons, but also clearly to the United States as well,” Burnham said. “What I said in the meeting is that we will work to find that resolution between the different sides, and we’ll work hard to find it.”

Ahead of his UN trip, Burnham spoke with Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, and an official readout of the conversation confirmed Burnham “reiterated his commitment to continue doing everything possible” alongside the US to advance the deal toward ratification. Downing Street sources have stressed that the current review does not represent a major policy shift from the previous position, which has always required US backing to move forward, though Streeting’s comments marked the first explicit public confirmation that the unamended draft cannot gain Trump’s support. Officials added that the review is not a formal, time-bound process, and no public funds will be transferred to Mauritius while the assessment is underway.

Political opposition figures have seized on the review to call for the entire deal to be scrapped. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch urged Burnham to abandon the agreement entirely, calling it a “terrible deal” that serves no UK national interest. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage went further, declaring “The Chagos deal is dead. Thank God.”

The dispute over the Chagos Islands dates back to 1965, when the UK separated the archipelago from Mauritius ahead of granting Mauritius independence, a move Mauritius has long argued was illegal. In 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a non-binding advisory opinion confirming the separation was unlawful and calling on the UK to end its administration of the islands as quickly as possible. The UN General Assembly endorsed the opinion, strengthening Mauritius’ sovereignty claims and pushing the UK to open formal negotiations in 2022.

Streeting told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the goal of the current process is to find a compromise that can be accepted by all stakeholders. “Describing the Diego Garcia base as “one of the most sensitive and valuable national security assets”, he said work was underway to find a deal “that maybe not everyone loves, but everyone can live with.”

Three months ahead of South Sudan’s first national election since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, President Salva Kiir has announced the full dissolution of the country’s long-running transitional administration, setting the stage for a poll that has already been delayed twice and faced years of political tension.

The dissolution, formalized under an amended law signed by Kiir this week, cleared out the entire existing transitional leadership structure: all five sitting vice presidents were removed from office, the national parliament was dissolved, and both national and state-level executive governments were disbanded. Kiir, who is running as the presidential candidate for his long-governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), will retain full constitutional executive powers until a newly elected president is inaugurated following the December 22 vote. He has already appointed a small set of caretaker ministers and state governors to maintain basic government functions through the election period.

The run-up to Tuesday’s formal announcement saw a dramatic security buildup across the capital, Juba. Joint patrols from the South Sudanese army and national intelligence services blocked entry to all government ministry compounds, turned away civil servants reporting for work, and increased patrols across high-traffic areas of the city. Government staff were instructed not to return to office until the following Monday, while United Nations agencies operating in Juba directed all non-essential personnel to switch to remote work as a precaution while security teams monitored the evolving situation.

Kiir, who has led South Sudan since independence, faces no major declared challengers in the upcoming poll. His most prominent political rival, former vice president Riek Machar, has been sidelined since last year when Kiir removed him from office and brought treason charges against him; Machar is currently detained under house arrest. Machar’s inclusion as vice president in the transitional government was a core provision of the 2018 peace deal that ended a brutal five-year civil war fought between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar respectively.

Weeks before the dissolution, Kiir made an unannounced leadership change at the country’s national election commission, removing chairperson Abednego Akok Kacuol from his post without public explanation and replacing him with Gabriel Bol Deng, the commission’s former secretary-general. Akok had publicly raised alarm in August over critical funding shortfalls, stating the commission required $250 million to run a free and fair election but had only received $21 million in committed funding to date.

Machar’s main opposition bloc, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO), has already signaled it will not participate in election preparations. In a public Facebook statement in June, acting SPLM-IO chairperson Nathaniel Pierino warned that any individuals attempting to register voters or conduct campaign activity in territory held by the opposition would be treated as prisoners of war.

The Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC), the independent body tasked with overseeing implementation of the 2018 peace agreement, has characterized South Sudan’s current political moment as an extraordinarily critical phase. The commission noted that multiple key negotiated provisions of the peace deal remain unfulfilled, and urged all political parties to quickly agree on a clear path that would deliver a credible, inclusive election and a peaceful conclusion to the transitional period that has been in place since South Sudan’s independence. The latest extension of the transitional period was originally scheduled to run until February 22, 2027, ahead of this week’s dissolution.

As Morocco prepares to hold its parliamentary elections this Wednesday, 27 political parties are competing for 395 seats in the country’s House of Representatives, with disillusioned young voters emerging as the central demographic all campaigns are scrambling to win over. In a political system structured as a constitutional monarchy, where King Mohammed VI holds ultimate executive authority—appointing the prime minister from the top-performing party and presiding over the kingdom’s highest policy-making body, the Council of Ministers—this election comes against a backdrop of growing youth frustration over systemic economic stagnation and political disconnect. Just weeks before voting day, a historic mass migration event laid bare the depth of this discontent: roughly 60,000 people, most of them young Moroccans desperate for better opportunities, risked their lives crossing from northern Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, a surge that left at least 100 dead in the deadliest crossing event the enclave has seen in modern history. This moment of crisis followed a nationwide wave of Gen Z-led protests that erupted in September 2025, when thousands took to the streets to decry sky-high youth unemployment, failing public healthcare, and soaring living costs. Demonstrators chanted calls for “freedom, dignity, and social justice,” before their demands escalated to targeted calls for current Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch to step down. The government’s crackdown on the unrest resulted in more than 2,400 protesters facing criminal prosecution, but the movement has nonetheless pushed a small cohort of young activists to run for office themselves, seeking to channel grassroots anger into institutional change. Among these new candidates is 29-year-old Hamza El Kharroubi, a former protester who was briefly detained during last year’s demonstrations. Running for a parliamentary seat with the small, green-aligned Environment and Sustainable Development Party, El Kharroubi represents the small but growing number of young people choosing to enter politics despite deep systemic skepticism. A native of Tetouan, just 21 miles from the Fnideq beach where the Ceuta migration surge began, he has made accountability for the crossing victims a core part of his platform, calling for financial compensation for the families of those who died. El Kharroubi frames the mass crossing as a direct consequence of Morocco’s long-running economic crisis: IMF data puts national unemployment at 13% for last year, with youth unemployment (for 15 to 24-year-olds) reaching a staggering 37.3%. Rather than aiming to defeat the country’s established political heavyweights this cycle, he says his goal is to claim a parliamentary seat to lay groundwork for a stronger youth-led political bloc by 2031. “As young people, we have to enter the parliament so by 2031 we have strong young politicians who can compete for a seat in the government,” he explained. Not all young activists share his belief in institutional change, however. Siham Azeroual, a 32-year-old environmental activist from the Atlas region, says she sees the current political landscape as little more than performative spectacle. “I have no hope for this election. I’m ashamed of our political scene. It’s a complete circus,” she told the BBC. Azeroual, who has taken part in both the 2011 February 20 movement that rewrote Morocco’s constitution and last year’s Gen Z protests, argues that meaningful change must start at the grassroots community level rather than inside parliament. Still, she says she plans to cast a ballot on Wednesday, seeing even incremental participation as a necessary step toward progress. While many young voters remain deeply skeptical of traditional parties, one political outsider has emerged as a surprise breakout star of the 2026 campaign: Fouzi Lekjaa, the wildly popular head of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, who is also a senior finance ministry official. Credited with driving the success of the Moroccan men’s national team, the Atlas Lions, which became the first Arab and African squad to reach a World Cup semi-final in 2022, Lekjaa joined the centrist Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM) back in July. With Morocco set to co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal, the football-mad nation has latched onto Lekjaa’s campaign, with videos of his rallies going viral online and crowds chanting the iconic “Sir” (meaning “Go” in Moroccan Arabic) catchphrase that defined the 2022 World Cup run. Lekjaa has leaned into this popularity, promising to lift Morocco to a top-six global ranking in education and healthcare—matching the current FIFA ranking of his national team. The ruling National Rally of Independents (RNI), led by incumbent Prime Minister Akhannouch, is seeking a second term, and has renewed its core campaign pledge to create one million new jobs by 2030, a promise that echoes across previous election cycles. Political analyst Rachid Aourraz, of the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis, says such promises are hollow. “The slogan ‘one million jobs’ has become an overused electoral slogan. There is also talk of raising the minimum wage, but what is proposed cannot withstand a structural inability to create stable net jobs,” Aourraz noted, adding that Morocco’s major parties do not compete over alternative governing models—only over how to implement policies already outlined by the royal palace. Alongside economic promises, foreign policy has also become a key dividing line in the campaign, with the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) seeking a political comeback by weaponizing widespread public anger over Israel’s actions in Gaza. Morocco normalized diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords, a deal negotiated when the PJD held power. Now led by populist former prime minister Abdelilah Benkirane, the party is running on a promise to fully cut diplomatic ties with Israel, calling the 2020 normalization a historic mistake. Widespread pro-Palestinian protests have rocked Morocco throughout the Gaza war, with tens of thousands demonstrating weekly in the capital Rabat, leading to the closure of Israel’s liaison office and the suspension of direct flights between the two countries. Despite this public outcry, Morocco and Israel announced earlier this month an agreement to reopen full reciprocal embassies, following talks between their top diplomats and the US ambassador to the United Nations. Benkirane has seized on the announcement to rally supporters, telling a Marrakesh campaign rally: “If we work hard, the king will close the Israeli embassy. The king does not like going against his own people.” For all the focus on winning youth votes, demographic data shows young people remain drastically underrepresented among the electorate: while more than half of Morocco’s 38.8 million population is under 35, just 4% of the 15.8 million registered voters are between 18 and 24. Many young Moroccans in the diaspora have also been shut out of participation, despite being at the forefront of last year’s protest movement. Hiba, a 27-year-old Moroccan living in Montreal, Canada—home to a community of more than 100,000 Moroccan expats—co-organized multiple pro-protest events for Gen Z in the city, where activists could speak freely without fear of prosecution that they would face at home. She says she would have voted via proxy, the only option for diaspora voters, but was unable to arrange for a representative in Morocco. Even so, she sees the protest movement as having already delivered small wins: “Gen Z protests didn’t go in vain. We achieved something. At least now we see more debates with young people on state TV,” she said. As polling stations open across the kingdom on Wednesday, the election will not only determine the makeup of the next government—it will also serve as a critical test of whether Morocco’s political establishment can address the deep-seated frustrations that have pushed a generation of young people to protest, risk dangerous migration, and question the status quo.