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.

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 deal that’s been announced is a rare win-win moment in international relations, with all the relevant actors able to claim a meaningful victory.

After years of legal wrangling and negotiations, Britain said it would surrender sovereignty of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

The British government made the deal to return all the Chagos Islands, except for Diego Garcia, which holds a U.K.-U.S. Navy base.

Britain said on Thursday it would cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal it said secured the future of the UK-U.S. Diego Garcia military base, and which could also pave the way for people displaced decades ago to return home.

Britain said on Thursday it would give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal that would allow people displaced decades ago to return home while London retains use of the UK-U.S.

The U.K. says it has reached a "historic" deal to cede the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean to the Republic of Mauritius, thus surrendering the final colony of Britain's once-sprawling African empire.

Mauritius has long argued it was forced to give up the islands in 1965 in return for independence from Britain

The U.K. will maintain de facto control over Diego Garcia, and the crucial U.S. military facility there, for another 99 years.

F ew places in the world are quite so remote as the 60 or so islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago. Africa sits 3,000km to the west, Indonesia 3,000km to the east; the nearest large land mass is Sri Lanka,