The final verdict is in: the supreme court last week upheld the court of appeal’s judgment that deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful , because it would be unsafe for them. It means that Rishi Sunak must return to the drawing board his flagship policy aimed at reducing the number of people trying to get to the UK to seek refuge by detaining those who do and sending a small fraction to Rwanda for their claims to be assessed and granted there. But, while the supreme court judgment underlines the immorality of the UK seeking to shirk its international responsibilities on refugee protection, even had the courts ruled the policy lawful, it would not have had the deterrent effect the prime minister has promised voters.
In June, the court of appeal assessed the evidence and ruled that deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful due to the risk that people with valid asylum claims who were sent to Rwanda would be returned to their home countries, where they would face persecution or inhumane treatment. The supreme court also looked at a breadth of evidence and unanimously concluded that the court of appeal was right to reach this judgment. It cited evidence for Rwanda’s poor human rights record, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture; serious defects in Rwanda’s asylum processes, including an untested right to appeal; its surprisingly high rejection rates for countries in known conflict zones; and its failures to honour an agreement with Israel, which tried a similar scheme, not to deport asylum seekers with valid claims to their home countries. The judges made clear that this evidence would have put the UK not just in breach of the European convention on human rights but of many other international treaties ratified by the UK as well as several domestic statutes.
