Speaking to the press in an airport hangar near Oxford on August 26, the leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, unveiled his party’s new policy on mass deportations.
There are many elements to the policy, but fundamentally it is a decision to abandon the UK’s decades-long commitment not to send people to places where they may face torture or death.
At the heart of the global asylum system is one basic principle: countries must not send people to places where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This rule – known as the principle of “non-refoulement” – derives from the 1951 Refugee Convention but also appears in other human rights laws and agreements. It is why European countries, including the UK, assess asylum claims even when people have arrived without authorisation.
