Britain’s proposal to send migrants to Rwanda made it to the UK’s highest court on Monday, with the government arguing that it was necessary to prevent Channel crossings. At the same time, refugees and those seeking asylum maintained Rwanda was unsafe.
In June, a lower court ruled that transporting thousands of asylum seekers more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) to East Africa was illegal because Rwanda was not a secure third nation. Government attorneys urged the Supreme Court to reverse this decision.
Recent laws will make the great majority of people who get to Britain by small boat from France have their asylum requests rejected and subject them to deportation.
According to the London Court of Appeal, the program was illegal under the British Human Rights Act, which made the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a component of British law because individuals transported to Rwanda ran the possibility of being returned home where they may suffer persecution.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to prevent the arrival of thousands of migrants in tiny boats off the south coast of England was severely damaged by that decision.
James Eadie, a representative for the government, told the UK’s highest court on Monday that there was “a serious and pressing need to take effective steps that will act as a deterrent to those undertaking the perilous and sometimes life-threatening journey” over the Channel.
Eight of the asylum seekers implicated in the case are represented by Raza Husain, who argued that sending them to Rwanda put them at risk of being deported back to their home countries in violation of international law.
He said Rwanda was a “one-party, authoritarian state” whose government “repeatedly imprisons, tortures, and kills those it considers to be its opponents.”
In its intervention in the appeal, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) argues that deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is unsafe.
In court documents, the agency’s attorneys stated that the organization “maintains its unequivocal warning against the transfer of asylum seekers to Rwanda.”
Legal teams for refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, and Sudan also want the court to rule that the system is illegal since refugees in Rwanda are subjected to cruel or inhumane treatment.
The Rwandan government has declared that it will allow deported Britons to start over safely in a different country.
HIGH RISKS
The conclusion, anticipated to result in a definitive decision by year’s end, might have significant political ramifications.
To turn around the fortunes of his party, Sunak, whose Conservatives are losing in surveys by roughly 20 points ahead of an election anticipated next year, has pledged to “stop the boats” as one of his five objectives.
Surveys reveal that voters are still very concerned about immigration, which was a big component in the 2016 referendum decision for Britain to leave the European Union, and that most people believe the government is managing the issue poorly.
The government had scheduled its first aircraft to deport Rwandans in June last year. Still, an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights prevented it at the last minute, awaiting the outcome of all UK legal proceedings.
To avoid another incident like this, some members of Sunak’s party want Britain to leave the ECHR.
Sunak assured the Conservative convention, “Know this; I will do everything is required to stop the boats.
The court case comes at a time when governments all over the world are debating how to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants who are fleeing conflict zones or looking for a better life in the West.
While European countries struggle with dealing with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, President Joe Biden’s administration in the United States said it will build sections to a border wall to prevent record crossings from Mexico.
