High Court rules UK not ‘safe’ for refugees due to Rwanda fears
THE Irish High Court has ruled that the UK should not have been designated a safe country to return asylum seekers to, amid fears of their onward deportation to Rwanda.
Judge Siobhán Phelan noted the UK government’s ‘contentious’ immigration policy sought to transfer asylum see
kers to Rwanda for the further processing of their claims.
In December 2020, when Britain withdrew from the EU due to Brexit, Justice Minister Helen McEntee signed an order designating the UK as a ‘safe third country’ for the purpose of the International Protection Act.
This enables the minister to reject an international protection application if the applicant has travelled from the UK and relevant criteria are met. The person can be returned to the UK for their asylum application to be considered there.
Two applicants for asylum in Ireland have challenged the lawfulness of the designation of the UK as a safe third country in the light of the Rwanda policy. Their counsel had argued that Ireland could not absolve itself of its responsibilities by sending people to one country, while knowing a further country that does not respect human rights would be the ‘ultimate destination’.
An agreement was signed between the UK and Rwandan governments in April 2022, under which those arriving in Britain without permission could be deported to the African country for a trial period, while their claims were determined by the Rwandan authorities.
Judge Phelan said the situation was constantly evolving, with the UK Supreme
Court having ruled the scheme unlawful as asylum seekers faced a real risk of being sent from Rwanda back to their home countries. She said, in response to the UK Supreme Court judgment, that the British government published a new treaty with Rwanda but international bodies had raised objections and as yet no one has been deported to Rwanda.
The two applicants’ cases were selected to represent a group of High Court challenges to decisions related to
UK transfers and the risk of being sent on to Rwanda. One is a 23-year-old man from Iraq, of Kurdish origin, who applied for protection in Ireland in May 2021. He applied for protection in the UK in 2018 but was refused in 2019. He claimed protection on religious and political grounds.
The second is a Nigerian national, who applied for protection here in May 2022, having had a student visa in the UK for the previous 17 months. He claimed he and his family were in danger from the Nigerian security forces, and that he was also in danger in the UK as he owed money. Judge Phelan said the applicants challenged the lawfulness of decisions made under the 2015 Act, refusing to admit them to the asylum process here and returning them to the UK.
Even more fundamentally, she said, the proceedings called into question the legal basis for designating the UK as a safe third country.
However, she said it was not necessary for her ‘at this time’ to decide if the UK could be considered safe for international protection applicants.
The judge said that the safe third country concept was a matter of domestic law. EU laws did not prevent such agreements being signed, so long as mandatory EU conditions were in place and operating effectively, she said.
In this case, she ruled, there was a gap between Irish and EU law, which meant there was a failure to provide the full extent of EU safeguards.
In particular, there was a failure to require the minister to be satisfied a person would not be subjected to serious harm on transfer to a third country. She said Ireland was in breach of the requirements of EU law, and added that decisions made based on the designation – including those of the two applicants – should be overturned.
‘Should be overturned’