Human rights to the rescue. While the British parliament has just adopted a law allowing the expulsion to Rwanda of asylum seekers who entered the country illegally, the head of human rights of the Council of Europe called, this Tuesday, United Kingdom to return to this project.
“The government must refrain from expelling people under the terms of its Rwanda plan and reverse the attack on the independence of justice that this bill constitutes,” declared, in a press release, the Commissioner of the Council of Europe for human rights.
Ban on refoulement of asylum seekers
Because there is a European Convention on Human Rights to which the United Kingdom adheres along with 45 other countries. Michael O’Flaherty recalls that under the terms of Article 3 of this convention, the United Kingdom does not have the right to return asylum seekers to their country of origin, even indirectly via a third country.
However, the text approved on the night of Monday to Tuesday in the House of Commons “prevents individuals from resorting to the British courts on this key issue of refoulement,” writes the senior Council of Europe official.
The European Court of Human Rights, which emanates from the Council of Europe, had in June 2022 stopped at the last minute a first flight planned by London to Rwanda. At the end of 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak assured that he would not allow “a foreign court to block” flights to this African country.