British Indian Ocean Territory

Postcard of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the British Indian Ocean Territory. While the island had previously been the home of a small number of copra plantation workers and their families, they were all forcibly removed between 1968 and 1973 and deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles so that the British government could build a joint military base with the United Stated. 

In 2019, this action and continued British administration of the archipelago were deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a ruling the United Nations General Assembly supported. The British government, however, dismissed the ruling as not legally binding. 

Stamp from the 2004 definitive series shows a bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica), a large migratory wadering bird that lives in the Arctic coasts and tundra from Scandinavia to Alaska, and overwinters on coasts in temperate and tropical regions of Australia and New Zealand. The migration of the subspecies Limosa lapponica baueri across the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to New Zealand is the longest known non-stop flight of any bird, and also the longest journey without pausing to feed by any animal. The round-trip migration for this subspecies is over 29,000 km.