A human rights black hole  The Chagos Islands have been excluded from almost every human rights treaty from the Geneva conventions (III/IV), the Convention against Torture, through to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Resulting in what Peter Sand calls “a kind of human rights black hole” which has enabled rendition flights to pass through the base. This is possible because the British government claims they have no permanent inhabitants. Sand suggests “the fiction of the “unpopulated archipelago”, staunchly defended by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO], will inevitably come back to haunt its authors in the very near future”. [1] With the islands being ‘uninhabited’ they are not entitled to an Exclusive Economic Zone under the UN Law of the Sea. Britain’s claim to the islands as a whole is also made more tenuous.  [1] Harris, Peter, ‘Review Article: Not just a military base: Reframing Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands’, African Affairs, 110/440, pp.491-99, 2011,  p.496