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A British court ruled that a U.K. government plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda is unlawful. It delivers a blow to the Conservative administration’s pledge to stop migrants making risky journeys across the English Channel
A British court ruled that a U.K. government plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda is unlawful. It delivers a blow to the Conservative administration’s pledge to stop migrants making risky journeys across the English Channel.
Refugee law expert David Cantor said the ruling would send a ripple effect more widely. Any country that might wish to enter into this kind of memorandum with the U.K. government, as Rwanda did, would equally be quite likely to be a government that had weak asylum procedures. There were questions about safety in the country, he said. The U.K. has had negotiations with many countries which do have robust court structures and asylum procedures, and there’s very little willingness there to contemplate these sorts of schemes, he added.
In a split two-to-one ruling, three Court of Appeal judges said Rwanda could not be considered a safe third country where migrants from any country could be sent. But the judges said that a policy of deporting asylum seekers to another country deemed as safe was not in itself illegal. The government said it would challenge the ruling in the U.K. Supreme Court. It has until July 6 to lodge an appeal.
The government’s own assessment acknowledges it would be extremely expensive, coming in at an estimated 169,000 pounds (US$214,000) per person. The UK is drafting legislation to bar anyone who arrives in the U.K. in small boats or by other unauthorized means from applying for asylum.
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The government made the deal with Rwanda more than a year ago. In the meantime, the Rwandan government says it remains committed to the agreement with London to deport illegal migrants from Britain to Rwanda, despite the British court ruling declaring the deal “illegal. The British Court of Appeal’s Thursday ruling comes to the dismay of both the Rwandan government and the British government.
