A court ruling has paved the way for the first flight under the controversial deal to leave Tuesday with more than 30 people.
Britain plans to send some migrants who arrive in the UK as stowaways or in small boats to Rwanda, where the UK government will process their asylum claims. If successful, they will stay in the African country. Human rights groups have called the idea unworkable and inhumane.
A British judge on Friday rejected a bid to ground a flight to take more than 30 asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda next week but gave the migrants permission for a last-minute appeal.
The flight leaving Tuesday is the first under a controversial deal between the UK and the East African country. Britain plans to send some migrants who arrive in the UK as stowaways or in small boats to Rwanda, where the UK government will process their asylum claims. If successful, they will stay in the African country. Human rights groups have called the idea unworkable and inhumane.
Judge Jonathan Swift on Friday refused a request from a group of the asylum-seekers,
backed by a trade union and refugee groups, for an injunction grounding the flight. But he said Judge could hear an appeal on Monday, and more legal challenges to the British government’s new Rwanda deportation policy are due in the coming days. Britain’s immigration minister, Home Secretary Priti Patel, welcomed the ruling and said the government would “not be deterred” by further legal challenges.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said he was disappointed and called the situation “extremely worrying.“
At the High Court in London, government lawyer Mathew Gullick said 37 people had been due to be aboard Tuesday’s flight, but six have had their deportation orders cancelled. He said the government still intended to operate the flight and future ones.
Patel said, “Rwanda is a safe country and has previously been recognised for providing a haven for refugees.” “We will continue preparations for the first flight to Rwanda, alongside the range of other measures intended to reduce small boat crossings. The humane, decent and moral response to migrants crossing the Channel is to send them to Rwanda,” said Patel, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom.
The government says it welcomes refugees who come to Britain by approved immigration routes but wants to put the criminal smuggling gangs who operate dangerous Channel crossings out of business. Over 28,000 migrants entered the UK across the Channel last year, up from 8500 in 2020. When a single boat capsized, dozens had died, including 27 people in November.
In announcing his plan to partner with Rwanda to manage migration, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed, on 14 April 2022, that the UK is “a beacon of openness and generosity”. He lauded the great British tradition of offering sanctuary to those who seek it through legal routes while outlining how he intends to curb what he termed illegal migration.
The UK’s offer of £120 million (NZ$232 million) to kick-start this partnership is attractive for Rwanda precisely because it comes under the aegis of development. The country is ranked 160th out of 189 in the 2021 Human Development Index, has long been a recipient of UK foreign aid and international assistance and already hosts nearly 130,000 refugees, 90% of whom remain in refugee camps and transit centres. The scheme would help elevate Rwanda’s international profile as an engaged partner in global migration and refugee governance.
The UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, hammered out by the Home Secretary Priti Patel and her counterparts in Kigali,
has one central purpose: to deter the arrival of asylum seekers by boat across the English Channel. Its genesis lies in a range of sources, none more insidious than the Australian offshore processing model. At its core are a rejection of international refugee law and its obligations. In its place is the sentiment of convenience, callousness and cruel stinginess.
The UK government intended to fly the first planeload of claimants to Rwanda on 14 June after agreeing on the plan with Kigali to deter illegal migrants from undertaking dangerous crossings of the Channel by boat. But delivering his decision after a one-day hearing, judge Jonathan Swift said it was in the “public interest” for Interior Minister Priti Patel “to be able to implement immigration control decisions”.
In contrast, The UN agency’s lawyer Laura Dubinsky said it “in no way endorses the UK-Rwandan arrangement”. “UNHCR is not involved in the UK-Rwanda arrangement, despite assertions to the contrary made by the secretary of state,” she told the court. Dubinsky said the would-be refugees were at risk of “serious, irreparable harm” if sent to Rwanda and that the UN had “serious concerns about Rwandan capacity”.
Earlier, the UN refugee agency had accused the British government of dishonesty over its plan after lawyers for the claimants said Patel’s interior ministry had claimed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) endorsed it.
UNHCR chief Mr Grandi also expressed his disagreement and said, “On Rwanda, I think we’ve been so clear over the last few weeks that we believe that this is all wrong, for so many different reasons“, A British newspaper says even Prince Charles has criticised the UK government’s plan to start deporting some asylum-seekers to Rwanda, calling it “appalling”.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released a critical new legal analysis of the migration partnership between the UK and Rwanda on 10 June 2022.
In short, UNHCR considers that the migration partnership, which allows the UK to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda, does not meet the requirements to be regarded as a lawful and appropriate bilateral transfer arrangement. UNHCR adds that the agreement between the UK and Rwanda contains inadequate safeguards to guarantee international protection. UNHCR says the migration partnership is incompatible with the letter and spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
In the latest news, the First UK deportation flight to Rwanda was cancelled after European court intervention. The European Court of Human Rights has decided to grant an urgent interim measure in the case of KN v. the United Kingdom (application no. 28774/22),
an asylum-seeker facing imminent removal to Rwanda. On 13 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights received a request to indicate an urgent interim measure to the UK Government, under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, about an Iraqi national who, having claimed asylum upon arrival in the UK on 17 May 2022, is facing removal to Rwanda on the evening of 14 June 2022. The European Court has indicated to the UK Government that the applicant should not be removed to Rwanda until three weeks after the delivery of the final domestic decision in his ongoing judicial review proceedings.
Insisting the government would press ahead with its plan, Priti Patel told MPs that “the usual suspects” had set out to “thwart” it in an apparent reference to human-rights lawyers who have challenged it. But she added: “This government will not be deterred from doing the right thing. The inevitable legal last-minute challenges will not put us off. Nor will we allow mobs to block removals.” She said the European Court of Human Rights decision that halted last night’s flight was “disappointing and surprising”, but “we remain committed to this policy”.
