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The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022)
Philippe Joseph SandsKCFRSL (born 17 October 1960) is a British, French, and Mauritian[2] writer and lawyer at 11 King's Bench Walk[3] and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at the Faculty of Laws, University College London.[4] Working in international law, he has appeared as counsel and advocate before international courts and tribunals.
Sands served as Mauritius' chief legal adviser, counsel, and publicist from April 2010 to December 2024, and has been a vocal supporter of its claims of sovereignty over Chagos and its former inhabitants, and against UK sovereignty.
Early life
Sands was born in London on 17 October 1960 to Jewish parents; his mother (née Buchholz)[1] was French.[5]
From 2010 to 2012, Sands served as a Commissioner on the UK Government Commission on a Bill of Human Rights.[citation needed] The commission's Report was published in December 2012.[10][citation needed]
Sands has expressed the view that a ruling by an international judicial body, such as the International Court of Justice, could help resolve the scientific dispute on climate change and be authoritative and legally dispositive.[11]
In November 2020, a panel of international lawyers chaired by Sands and Florence Mumba started drafting a proposed law criminalising ecocide, the destruction of ecosystems.[12] The law could be in force within five years, he told the Financial Times in July 2021.[13]
U.S. & U.K. Foreign Policy
In 2006, in a new edition of Lawless World, Sands revealed that the then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had told President George W. Bush that he would support US plans to invade Iraq before he had sought legal advice about the invasion's legality. The book writes of a memorandum dated 31 January 2003 that described a two-hour meeting between Blair and Bush, during which Bush discussed the possibility of luring Saddam Hussein's forces to shoot down a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an act that would cause Iraq to be in breach of UN Security Council Resolutions.[14]
In 2009, Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker on Sands' reaction to news that Spanish jurist Baltazar Garzon had received motions requesting that six former Bush officials might be charged with war crimes.[15]
Sands attended a reading of Torture Team at the Long Wharf Theatre in 2011, described as Sands' "account of the U.S. sanctioning of torture".[16]
U.K. Arms Sales
In December 2015, Sands and two colleagues at Matrix Chambers drafted a Legal Opinion on the legality of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for Amnesty International, Oxfam and Saferworld. The Opinion concluded that by authorising the transfer of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the UK government was acting in breach of its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty, the EU Common Position on Arms Exports and the UK's Consolidated Criteria on Arms Exports.[17]
Israel Palestine
In February 2024, Sands argued in favour of the State of Palestine at the International Court of Justice's case on Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. He said that "Palestinian statehood is not dependent on the approval of Israel" and that international law of self-determination required other "UN Member States [to] bring Israel's occupation to an immediate end. No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No contribution to forcible actions. No money, no arms, no trade, no nothing."[18] He also claimed that the State of Israel "has arrogated to itself the right to decide who owns Palestinian land, who may live on it, and how it must be used" and its support for 700,000 settlers living illegally in the occupied Palestinian territory as "demographic manipulation of the highest order".[19] Sands refuted the US and the UK claims that an advisory opinion from the ICJ would negatively impact future negotiations.[19]
British Indian Ocean Territory; Chagos Archipelago
Sands served as Mauritius's chief legal adviser, counsel, and publicist from April 2010 to December 2024, and has been "a longtime campaigner for the country to control" Chagos against the UK's claims.[20][21][22] Michael Gove noted that Sands is open about his support for Mauritius, but less open about "when he planted a Mauritian flag on UK territory– the tweet celebrating the annexation has been deleted."[23]
Under the terms of a 2024 treaty Sands negotiated, Mauritius will lease Diego Garcia to the United Kingdom for "£101m a year, plus development monies for Mauritius.[22] The £30bn from the deal will reportedly be used to pay off Mauritius's national debt, and remove all income tax for 81% of the population.[22][24]
Remarking on the treaty at University of Cambridge in 2024, Sands stated "It's a really fantastic thing about Britain that I think it's probably the only country in the world where when you've been to an international court against your own country, won and humiliated them completely, they still celebrate you and that is special."[22][25]
According to Yuan Yi Zhu, most Chagossians, who live in Crawley, U.K., view Sands negatively, "having been treated like third-class citizens in Mauritius, a country five days away by sail from their homeland and where they face widespread racial discrimination".[22] Zhu wrote that following the treaty, "so many Chagossians have chosen to flee Mauritius and to come to the UK that Crawley Borough Council declared a housing emergency."[22]
Drafting of Law Outlawing Dissent against Mauritian Claims
In a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee on the Overseas Territories on February 28, 2024, Sands admitted to helping draft a 2021 Mauritian law criminalizing "misrepresenting the sovereignty of Mauritius over any part of its territory", which would have made it illegal for him to support British sovereignty in his work for Mauritius, and which made it illegal for Chagossians, in and outside of Mauritius, to dissent against Mauritius's claims.[22][26][27] Sands testified he did not think this was hypocritical given his leadership at the free expression organization, English PEN, and disagreed that anyone would be prosecuted for such views under the law.[22][27]
Personal life
Sands lives in a "charming, blue-plaqued Hampstead townhouse" in North London with his wife and three children.[5][28]
In June 2025, Sands stated that he was given Mauritian citizenship in 2020.[21] It was granted by special ministerial decree.[22]
In a 2016 interview for The Guardian, he asserted: "I want to be treated as Philippe Sands individual, not Philippe Sands Brit, Londoner or Jew."[29] Sands has argued that statehood is "that most artificial and fake of constructs" and called for a "global passport" to break the "oppressive, absurd, monopoly power" of the nation-state.[23]
Sands has stated that he is "a great friend" of UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.[30][28]
Reception
Remarking on Sands work for Mauritius in the Chagos Archipeclago sovereignty dispute, Yuan Yi Zhu wrote that Sands has "maintained a flourishing writing career. His 2022 book on the Chagos affair, The Last Colony, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and received rave reviews, consolidating his public image as a champion of the Chagossians' cause." However, Yuan criticized: "it takes a special degree of cynicism to exploit the plight of some of the least powerful and most destitute people in Britain to enrich a banana republic in its neo-colonialist project and to present oneself as the moral hero in the process."[22]
In a book review in The Guardian of Sands book on Chagos, The Last Colony, Tim Adams wrote that "Human rights lawyer Philippe Sands relates the wider tragedy of the scandal with nerve and precision."[31]
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