British justice declared on Thursday “illegal” the controversial plan to deport migrants who arrived illegally in the United Kingdom to Rwanda for lack of guarantees for their safety, to the chagrin of the government which announced that it wanted to seize the Supreme Court.
The Court of Appeal considered that Rwanda cannot as it stands be considered a “safe third country” because there is “a real risk that people sent to Rwanda will be sent back to their country of origin where they were in subject to persecution and other inhuman treatment”.
Any deportation to Rwanda would constitute “a violation” of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that “no one may inflict injury or torture on anyone”, the appeal court ruled. .
“Unless and until deficiencies in its asylum process are corrected, sending asylum seekers to Rwanda will be illegal,” the court said in a summary of the judgment.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, said he “fundamentally disagrees” with this decision and announced that his government would seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
“The policy of this government is very simple, it is this country, and your government, that should decide who comes here, not the gangs of evildoers,” he said in a statement, saying he would ” whatever is necessary” to implement it. “Rwanda is a safe country,” he insisted.
Persecution fears
The fight against illegal immigration is one of the priorities of Mr. Sunak’s government.
Despite Brexit promises to “take back control” of borders, more than 45,000 migrants crossed the Channel from France in small boats in 2022, a record. And they are more than 11,000 this year to have done the same.
The court of appeal made it clear that its decision did not imply “no view whatsoever on the political merits” of this measure, and that its only concern was to judge whether this policy is in accordance with the law.
Despite this decision, “Rwanda remains fully committed to making this partnership” with the United Kingdom “work”, Kigali government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo told AFP.
“While this decision is ultimately up to the British courts, we dispute the fact that Rwanda is not considered a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers,” she added.
In terms of human rights, however, Rwanda is regularly singled out for its harsh repression of political opposition and its failure to respect freedom of expression.
To change direction
Hailing a “rare piece of good news in the grim human rights landscape in the UK”, the director of the NGO Human Rights Watch in the country, Yasmine Ahmed, urged Home Secretary Suella Braverman to “give up this dream feverish, impractical and unethical”.
The judgment “offers the government the opportunity to change course,” she added: “Rather than treating human beings like cargo that it ships elsewhere, it should focus on ending the environment. hostile towards refugees and asylum seekers”.
Last December, the High Court in London gave the green light to the expulsion of certain illegal migrants to Rwanda, judging the device legal.
The project has since been put on hold due to legal action.
But the judges had accepted that the appeal of several applicants and the Charity Aid association, which provides legal support to asylum seekers, be examined. They denounce a “systemically unjust” project and believe that asylum seekers who would be deported to Rwanda risk being persecuted there.
No evictions have yet taken place. A first flight scheduled for June 2022 had been canceled after a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) calling for a thorough review of this policy.
The plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was announced when Boris Johnson was prime minister, in a bid to discourage illegal Channel crossings.
In 2021, 27 people lost their lives trying to cross this strait, one of the busiest in the world. At least four others died last year.