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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2020
Mauritius had a pivotal role in the evolution and spread of state human rights institutions in the 1960s. The island offered an influential model for how an ombudsman, a Scandinavian mechanism, could be transported to postcolonial, economically developing, and multi-racial countries. However, this was a compromised mechanism that fell short of local ambitions for an effective guarantee of individual rights, minority protections, and socioeconomic justice. This article argues that the Mauritian ombudsman embodied the uneven power-laden struggles of the postcolonial transition, where British colonial imperatives and jealousy over sovereign authority predominated. With the use of private papers, British archival records, and Mauritian legislative debates, the article examines the relationship between decolonization and the early precursors to national human rights institutions, later popularized in the 1990s. The findings are critical for recognizing the inherent limitations of these institutions and the forgotten possibilities imagined by some anti-colonial actors for remaking postcolonial society.
1 Linda C. Reif, The Ombudsman, Good Governance and the International Human Rights System (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004), 1–2.
2 Donald C. Rowat, The Ombudsman Plan: Essays on the Worldwide Spread of an Idea (Toronto: The Canadian Publishers, 1973), 118–19; Bernard Frank, ‘The Ombudsman and Human Rights’, Administrative Law Review 22, no. 3 (1970): 492; Bernard Frank, ‘The Ombudsman – Revisited’, International Bar Journal 6, no. 1 (1975): 48.
3 Rachel Murray, The Role of National Human Rights Institutions at the International and Regional Levels: The Experience of Africa (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2007), 1, 4.
4 On the recent distinction between a ‘classical ombudsman’ and a ‘human rights ombudsman’, see Victor O. Ayeni, ‘Ombudsmen as Human Rights Institutions’, Journal of Human Rights 13, no. 4 (2014): 498–502; Jeong-Woo Koo and Francisco O. Ramirez, ‘National Incorporation of Global Human Rights: Worldwide Expansion of National Human Rights Institutions, 1966–2004’, Social Forces 87, no. 3 (2009): 1324–5; Thomas Pegram, ‘Diffusion Across Political Systems: The Global Spread of National Human Rights Institutions’, Human Rights Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2010): 733–4, 736–7; Reif, Ombudsman, 2–4, 7–9.
5 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘Ethnicity Versus Nationalism’, Journal of Peace Research 28, no. 3 (1991): 263–78; Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘A Future-Oriented, Non-Ethnic Nationalism? Mauritius as an Exemplary Case’, Ethnos 58, no. 3–4 (1993): 197–221; Eliphas G. Mukonoweshuro, ‘Containing Political Instability in a Poly-Ethnic Society: The Case of Mauritius’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 14, no. 2 (1991): 199–224; Barbara Wake Carroll and Terrance Carroll, ‘Accommodating Ethnic Diversity in a Modernizing Democratic State: Theory and Practice in the Case of Mauritius’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 120–42.
6 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mauritius: Report on Mauritius: 1966 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1968), 13.
7 R. Jeetah, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal: Life and Times (Port Louis, Mauritius: G. Gangaram, 1980), 46; A. R. Mannick, Mauritius: The Development of a Plural Society (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1979), 127, 130; Anthony Greenwood, ‘Mauritius – Constitutional Developments’, Cabinet: Defence and Overseas Policy Committee paper, 25 May 1965, Dominions Office 213/178, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, London (hereafter cited as TNA).
8 Sonia Cardenas, Chains of Justice: The Global Rise of State Institutions for Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 1–2, 60–1, 350–2.
9 Ibid., 58–62.
10 Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 92–6.
11 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 84–119. See also Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn, eds., The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Jan Eckel, The Ambivalence of Good: Human Rights in International Politics since the 1940s, trans. Rachel Ward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 117–51.
12 Steven L. B. Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). See also Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
13 This critique draws from Steven L. B. Jensen and Roland Burke, ‘From the Normative to the Transnational: Methods in the Study of Human Rights History’, in Research Methods in Human Rights: A Handbook, ed. Bård A. Andreassen, Hans-Otto Sano, and Siobhán McInerney-Lankford (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017), 124, 132.
14 Barbara de Smith, correspondence with author, 19 July 2018.
15 Roland Burke, ‘Disseminating Discord and Discovering the World: UN Advisory Services on Human Rights and the Illusory Faith in Specialist Knowledge’, International Journal of Human Rights 21, no. 5 (2017): 590–2.
16 Stephan Hurwitz, ‘The Experience of Parliamentary Commissioners in Certain Scandinavian Countries’, May 1959, United Nations document (hereafter cited as UN doc.) ST/TAO/HR/6, WP/2.
17 ‘1959 UN Seminar on Judicial and Other Remedies Against the Illegal Exercise or Abuse of Administrative Authority: Peradeniya (Kandy), Ceylon, 4–15 May 1959’, UN doc. ST/TAO/HR/4.
18 Deborah Sutton, ‘The Political Consecration of Community in Mauritius, 1948–68’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35, no. 2 (2007): 239–62; Larry W. Bowman, Mauritius: Democracy and Development in the Indian Ocean (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 32.
19 Adele Smith Simmons, Modern Mauritius: The Politics of Decolonization (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 111; Mannick, Mauritius, 57.
20 See, for example, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 10 May 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1960), 906; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 5 April 1960, in ibid., 199.
21 Jeetah, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 9, 14.
22 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 14 March 1961, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Third Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1961), 128–30, 133; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 19 April 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session, 607; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 8 November 1960, in ibid., 2598; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 15 December 1961, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Third Session, 4110–11; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 22 June 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session (Port Louis: Legislative Assembly, 1965), 1197; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 26 July 1966, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Third Session (Port Louis: Legislative Assembly, 1966), 1881.
23 Mannick, Mauritius, 45–6; Bowman, Mauritius, 18, 23.
24 Bissoondoyal, 19 April 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session, 607.
25 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 25 October 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session, 2286.
26 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 31 May 1960, in ibid., 1339.
27 Jeetah, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 46-7; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 11 November 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session, 2721.
28 R. J. Venkateswaran, Cabinet Government in India (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967), 182–6; Kewal L. Panjabi, Rajendra Prasad: First President of India (London: Macmillan and Company, 1960), 190–1; ‘The President’s Suggestion: Crusade Against Corruption’, Eastern Economist, 18 December 1959, 975; ‘Chronology: Political Developments’, Indian Affairs Record 6, no. 2 (1960): 31.
29 Bissoondoyal, 8 November 1960, in Mauritius Legislative Council: Second Session, 2608, 2616; Bissoondoyal, 11 November 1960, in ibid., 2721–3; Bissoondoyal, 14 March 1961, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Third Session, 132; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 3 October 1961, in ibid., 2853–4.
30 Sarah Elizabeth Stockwell, ‘Britain and Decolonization in an Era of Global Change’, in The Oxford Handbook of The Ends of Empire, ed. Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 65–84; Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); John Darwin, Britain and Decolonization: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988); John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 342–85.
31 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 100–1; Mannick, Mauritius, 56.
32 Bowman, Mauritius, 35–6; Hansraj Mathur, Parliament in Mauritius (Stanley: Éditions de l’Océan Indien, 1991), 20.
33 David Anderson, ‘“Yours in Struggle for Majimbo”: Nationalism and the Party Politics of Decolonization in Kenya, 1955–64’, Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 3 (2005): 547–64; James Kirby, ‘“Conditional on a Bill of Rights”: Race and Human Rights in the Constitution of Botswana, 1960–66’, Law & History (Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society) 4, no. 1 (2017): 30–61.
34 K. Tirvengadum, memorandum to Iain Macleod, April 1961, TNA, Colonial Office (hereafter cited as CO) 1036/631, emphasis in original.
35 Mauritius constitutional conference, note of discussion with IFB, 28 June 1961, TNA, CO 1036/643; Mauritius constitutional conference, report of proceedings, 4 July 1961, TNA, CO 1036/643.
36 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 112–13, 118.
37 L. Raymond Devienne to Iain Macleod, 7 April 1961, TNA, CO 1036/630; Mauritius constitutional conference, note of discussion with PM, 28 June 1961, TNA, CO 1036/643; Y. P. Ghai, ‘The Kenya Council of State and the African Affairs Board of the Central African Federation: An Experiment in the Protection of Minorities’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1963): 1092–3.
38 Sir Colville Deverell to Reginald Maudling, 18 June 1962, TNA, CO 1036/624; Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 95, 199.
39 Reaction to constitutional talks, July 1961, TNA, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (hereafter cited as FCO) 141/12060; Pacific and Indian Ocean Department (hereafter cited as PIOD), ‘Mauritius Constitutional Conference June 1961’, note on memoranda, May 1961, TNA, CO 1036/623; note of talks between Governor, A. R. Thomas, and political leaders, 27 March 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1095.
40 A. R. Thomas to Stanley de Smith, 21 March 1961, TNA, CO 1036/623.
41 H. Kumarasingham, ‘Written Differently: A Survey of Commonwealth Constitutional History in the Age of Decolonization’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46, no. 5 (2018): 884.
42 Stanley de Smith, The New Commonwealth and Its Constitutions (London: Stevens & Sons, 1964), 179, 210–11.
43 J. E. Marnham to John Shaw Rennie, 21 December 1962, TNA, CO 1036/624; N. Fisher to Duncan Sandys, 8 May 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1092; A. H. Poynton to Sandys, 17 April 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1092.
44 PIOD, ‘Mauritius Constitutional Conference June 1961’, note on memoranda, May 1961, TNA, CO 1036/623.
45 Mauritius constitutional review, statement by Colonial Secretary, June 1961, TNA, CO 1036/643.
46 A. W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Charles O. H. Parkinson, Bills of Rights and Decolonization: The Emergence of Domestic Human Rights Instruments in Britain’s Overseas Territories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
47 Stanley de Smith, ‘Constitutional Safeguards – Middle-Term and Long-Term’, 13 June 1961, TNA, CO 1036/643.
48 Ghai, ‘Kenya Council of State’, 1099, 1132.
49 Note of meeting in Hall’s Room, 9 June 1961, TNA, CO 1036/639.
50 De Smith, ‘Constitutional Safeguards’.
51 Stanley de Smith, ‘Anglo-Saxon Ombudsman?’, Political Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1962): 9–10.
52 Glen O’Hara, ‘The Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, the Foreign Office, and the Sachsenhausen Case, 1964–1968’, Historical Journal 53, no. 3 (2010): 771.
53 De Smith, ‘Constitutional Safeguards’.
54 Sir Colville Deverell to A. R. Thomas, 3 November 1961, TNA, CO 1036/646.
55 Sir Rampersad Neerunjun, ‘Ombudsman’, February 1962, TNA, FCO 141/12187.
56 R. Terrell to J. E. Marnham, 26 January 1962, TNA, CO 1036/646.
57 Colonial Office communique, 8 July 1961, TNA, CO 1036/624.
58 Sir Colville Deverell, 27 February 1962, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Fourth Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1962), 8.
59 Jules Koenig, 6 March 1962, in ibid., 64–6.
60 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 6 March 1962, in ibid., 96–7.
61 Harold Walter, 6 April 1962, in ibid., 613–16.
62 J. E. Marnham to Sir Colville Deverell, 26 February 1962, TNA, FCO 141/12187; R. Terrell to Marnham, 26 January 1962, TNA, CO 1036/646.
63 ‘1962 UN Seminar on Judicial and Other Remedies Against the Abuse of Administrative Authority with Special Emphasis on the Role of Parliamentary Institutions: Stockholm, Sweden, 12–25 June 1962’, UN doc. ST/TAO/HR/15; Harold S. Kent, ‘The Seminar at Stockholm’, note on Scandinavian ombudsman, June 1962, TNA, TS 58/605.
64 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 9 October 1962, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Fourth Session, 2337.
65 Eliezer S. Poupko, ‘An Exploratory Study of Constitutional Design in Three Island States: Seychelles, Comoros, and Mauritius’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 35, no. 3 (2017): 337; Anand Mulloo, ed., Our Struggle: 20th Century Mauritius (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1982), 104; Colonial Office brief, 1963 Mauritius Legislative Council election results, 9 February 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1082.
66 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 151; Mathur, Parliament in Mauritius, 21–2.
67 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 158; John Rennie to Herbert Bowden, 23 January 1967, TNA, FCO 32/268.
68 Mulloo, ed., Our Struggle, 13–18, 33.
69 Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 10 November 1964, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: First Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1964); John Rennie to A. J. Fairclough, 11 January 1965, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
70 J. E. Marnham to Sir Colville Deverell, 26 February 1962, TNA, FCO 141/12187.
71 A. R. Thomas to J. E. Marnham, 16 May 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1082.
72 Harold Walter, 4 June 1963, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Fifth Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1963), 1380–1. See also note of talks between John Rennie, A. R. Thomas, and political leaders, 27 March 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1082.
73 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 49.
74 Central African Office, Report of the Nyasaland Constitutional Conference (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1962), 7–8.
75 John Rennie to Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 1 July 1963, TNA, FCO 141/12075; Rennie, note on talks with PM, 6 January 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1082; Jules Koenig to Rennie, 9 February 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1082.
76 Note of talks between John Rennie, A. R. Thomas, and political leaders, 27 March 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1095.
77 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 7 June 1963, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: Fifth Session, 1518–20.
78 Chris Baker, ‘Faith in the Public Sphere: In Search of a Fair and Compassionate Society for the Twenty-First Century’, Journal of Beliefs & Values 37, no. 3 (2016): 262.
79 Abdool Foondun, 19 November 1963, in Mauritius Legislative Council Debates: First Session (Port Louis: The Standard Printing Establishment, 1963), 63.
80 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 19 November 1963, in ibid., 83.
81 A. R. Thomas to Trafford Smith, James McPetrie, and A. H. Poynton, 6 August 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1092.
82 N. Fisher to Duncan Sandys, 8 May 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1092.
83 David M. McCourt, ‘What was Britain’s “East of Suez Role”? Reassessing the Withdrawal, 1964–1968’, Diplomacy & Statecraft 20, no. 3 (2009): 453–72.
84 David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 56–98; Christopher J. Lee, ‘The Indian Ocean during the Cold War: Thinking through a Critical Geography’, History Compass 11, no. 7 (2013): 526.
85 Anthony Greenwood, ‘Defence Facilities in the Indian Ocean’, 5 November 1965, TNA, CO 936/824; M. Z. Terry to A. J. Fairclough, 14 February 1967, TNA, FCO 32/268.
86 ‘Base’s Future Hinges on Constitution Talks’, The Guardian, 6 September 1965; Foreign Office to UK UN Mission, 6 November 1965, TNA, CO 936/824; Bowman, Mauritius, 157, 160–1.
87 Darwin, Britain and Decolonization, 227.
88 International Court of Justice, ‘Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965’, 25 February 2019, https://www.icj-cij.org/files/case-related/169/169-20190225-01-00-EN.pdf.
89 N. Fisher to Duncan Sandys, 8 May 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1092.
90 Stanley de Smith, ‘An Ombudsman for Mauritius?’, 8 July 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1082; Stanley de Smith, ‘An Ombudsman for Mauritius?’, 22 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
91 Stanley de Smith to A. R. Thomas, 15 March 1963, TNA, CO 1036/1082.
92 Stanley de Smith, interview with Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 31 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; Stanley de Smith, interview with Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 10 August 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
93 D. Dookharam and others, memorandum to Stanley de Smith, 27 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12196, emphasis in original. See also Oddvar Hollup, ‘The Disintegration of Caste and Changing Concepts of Indian Ethnic Identity in Mauritius’, Ethnology 33, no. 4 (1994): 297–8, 313–14.
94 Stanley de Smith, synopsis of memoranda, 29 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; André Bazerque, Comité de Vigilance Creole, memorandum to Stanley de Smith, 9 February 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1083. See also Stanley de Smith, note on interview with Ah Chuen, 10 August 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; Bazerque to Anthony Greenwood, 30 August 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1144.
95 Stanley de Smith, interview with PM, 3 August 1964, TNA, FCO 141 12078.
96 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 136.
97 Stanley de Smith, interview with A. H. Osman, 30 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; Stanley de Smith, interview with Abdul Razack Mohamed and A. H. Osman, August 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
98 Abdul Razack Mohamed, memorandum on de Smith report, April 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1401.
99 N. Fisher, ‘Case for Visit by Professor de Smith’, note for Colonial Secretary, 8 May 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1092.
100 John de St Jorre, ‘An Impoverished Independence’, Round Table 58, no. 230 (1968): 217–19.
101 Stanley de Smith, ‘A Constitutional Council?’, 31 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
102 Stanley de Smith to Anthony Greenwood, final report, November 1964, TNA, CO 1036/1100; Stanley de Smith, interview with A. H. Osman, 30 July 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; Stanley de Smith, interview with Labour Party ministers, 5 August 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078; Stanley de Smith, interview with Jules Koenig and Gaëtan Duval, 3 August 1964, TNA, FCO 141/12078.
103 Stanley de Smith, report for Anthony Greenwood, February 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1100. The latter recommendation was turned into a densely formulaic minority safeguard known as the ‘Best Loser System’, following the 1966 Banwell Commission and 1967 talks with John Stonehouse, Parliamentary Undersecretary for the Colonies. Raj Mathur, ‘Parliamentary Representation of Minority Communities: The Mauritian Experience’, Africa Today 44, no. 1 (1997): 63–4, 74–5.
104 ICJ, Report of the British Guiana Commission of Inquiry: Racial Problems in the Public Service (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 1965). See also Howard B. Tolley Jr, The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 122–4.
105 Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 162, 186–8; Bowman, Mauritius, 39, 41.
106 Colin A. Palmer, Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana’s Struggle for Independence (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 191–240; Cary Fraser, ‘The “New Frontier” of Empire in the Caribbean: The Transfer of Power in British Guiana, 1961–1964’, International History Review 22, no. 3 (2000): 583–610.
107 Meredith Terretta, ‘Anti-Colonial Lawyering, Postwar Human Rights, and Decolonization across Imperial Boundaries in Africa’, Canadian Journal of History 52, no. 3 (2017): 477.
108 ICJ, Report of the British Guiana Commission of Inquiry, 119, 195–9.
109 M. De Merieux, ‘The Ombudsman in the Commonwealth Caribbean’, Anglo-American Law Review 10, no. 1 (1981): 11–12, 22.
110 Harold A. Lutchman, ‘The Office of Ombudsman in Guyana’, Caribbean Studies 13, no. 1 (1973): 62–77.
111 Anerood Jugnauth, 30 March 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session, 124.
112 Constitutional conference: record of meeting, 21 September 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1167.
113 Constitutional conference: record of meeting, 8 September 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1167.
114 Record of meeting between Anthony Greenwood and IFB representatives, 7 April 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1400. See also Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 29 October 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session, 1486.
115 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 29 March 1966, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Third Session, 146–7; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 11 April 1968, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: First Session (Port Louis: Legislative Assembly, 1968), 270; Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, 26 July 1966, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Third Session, 1890.
116 Labour Party memorandum for constitutional conference, September 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1166; constitutional conference: record of meeting, 7 September 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1167.
117 Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 14 June 1966, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Third Session, 1290–1.
118 L. R. Chaperon, 23 March 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session, 59–60.
119 Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 15 September 1967, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: First Session, 1514.
120 Beekrumsing Ramlallah, 27 April 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session, 388–9. See also V. Govinden, 23 April 1965, in ibid., 252; R. Gujadhur, 30 March 1965, in ibid., 106–7.
121 Beekrumsing Ramlallah, 29 August 1967, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: First Session, 1014–15.
122 Poupko, ‘Exploratory Study of Constitutional Design’, 337–8.
123 Extract from Mauritius constitutional conference report, 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1101.
124 Joseph Minattur, ‘Ombudsman in Mauritius’, Modern Review 124, no. 8 (1969): 581.
125 Mauritius National Assembly, ‘The Constitution of the Republic of Mauritius’, http://mauritiusassembly.govmu.org/English/constitution/Pages/constitution2016.pdf; Veda Bhadain, ‘The Institution of the Ombudsman in Mauritius’, in Human Rights Commissions and Ombudsman Offices: National Experiences Throughout the World, ed. Kamal Hossain, Leonard F. M. Besselink, Haile Selassie Gebre Selassie, and Edmond Völker (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2001), 315–29.
126 Minattur, ‘Ombudsman in Mauritius’, 581; Frank, ‘Ombudsman and Human Rights’, 472.
127 Mauritius constitutional conference: Brief on the Ombudsman, 1965, TNA, CO 1036/1101.
128 Minattur, ‘Ombudsman in Mauritius’, 582.
129 Stanley de Smith to A. R. Rushford, 9 November 1966, TNA, FCO 141/12079, emphasis in original.
130 Herbert Bowden to John Rennie, 23 November 1966, TNA, FCO 141/12079.
131 Mulloo, ed., Our Struggle, 42, 111, 183–5; Mannick, Mauritius, 125; Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, 28 May 1965, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: Second Session, 906.
132 Gaëtan Duval, 12 September 1967, in Mauritius Legislative Assembly Debates: First Session, 1346.
133 Ramawad Sewgobind, The Ombudsman Institution in Mauritius (Edmonton: International Ombudsman Institute, 1980), 14–15; Bhadain, ‘Institution of the Ombudsman in Mauritius’, 315.
134 The Ombudsman: Circumstances Leading to the Resignation of Mr. Gunnar Lindh (Port Louis: Mauritius Legislative Assembly, 1972); Mannick, Mauritius, 137.
135 Sewgobind, Ombudsman Institution in Mauritius; S. M. Hatteea, ‘The Ombudsman in Mauritius: Thirty Years On’, International Ombudsman Yearbook 3 (1999): 166–7.
136 See, for example, Deborah Bräutigam, ‘The “Mauritius Miracle”: Democracy, Institutions, and Economic Policy’, in State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa, ed. Richard A. Joseph (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 158; Adam Aft and Daniel Sacks, ‘Mauritius: An Example of the Role of Constitutions in Development’, University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review 18, no. 105 (2010): 132, 136; Henry Srebrnik, ‘Can an Ethnically-Based Civil Society Succeed? The Case of Mauritius’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies 18, no. 1 (2000): 15; Richard Sandbrook, ‘Origins of the Democratic Developmental State: Interrogating Mauritius’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 3 (2005): 549–81.
137 Julia Waters, ‘“Les années de braise” Reconsidered: Literary Representations of Mauritian Independence, Fifty Years On’, South Asian Diaspora 10, no. 2 (2018): 75–90.
138 Volume 1: Report of the Truth and Justice Commission (Port Louis: Government Printing, 2011); Richard Croucher, Mark Houssart, and Didier Miche, ‘The Mauritian Truth and Justice Commission: Legitimacy, Political Negotiation and the Consequences of Slavery’, African Journal of International and Comparative Law 25, no. 3 (2017): 326–46.
139 John Mukum Mbaku, Protecting Minority Rights in African Countries: A Constitutional Political Economy Approach (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2018).
140 Embassy, Port Louis, to Department of State, 15 September 1978, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1973–79 Electronic Telegrams, 1978PORTL01065, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, USA.
141 Mathur, Parliament in Mauritius, 3–4, 218–19; Mukonoweshuro, ‘Containing Political Instability’, 206–7; Bowman, Mauritius, 73–4; Mannick, Mauritius, 17, 140.
142 Robert Martin, ‘The Ombudsman in Zambia’, Journal of Modern African Studies 15, no. 2 (1977): 249; Annemarie Jacomy-Millette, ‘Is the Institution of the Ombudsman Applicable to Africa? Legislation and First Results’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 147; John Hatchard, ‘The Institution of the Ombudsman in Africa with Special Reference to Zimbabwe’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 35 (1986): 257.
143 Human Rights Watch, Protectors or Pretenders? Government Human Rights Commissions in Africa (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001). Scholars and non-governmental organizations are generally critical of the performance of NHRIs, particularly in Africa. See Cardenas, Chains of Justice, 29–30; Murray, Role of National Human Rights Institutions; Amnesty International, National Human Rights Institutions: Amnesty International’s Recommendations for Effective Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, 30 September 2001, 1–2, 13, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ior40/007/2001/en/; Anne Smith, ‘The Unique Position of National Human Rights Institutions: A Mixed Blessing?’, Human Rights Quarterly 28, no. 4 (2006): 905–10.
144 Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 122.
145 C. Raj Kumar, ‘National Human Rights Institutions and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Toward the Institutionalization and Developmentalization of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 28, no. 3 (2006): 755–79.