Today’s court of appeal judgment against the government’s plan to give Rwanda cash to take asylum seekers, is a victory for reason and compassion. It confirms the instincts of millions of caring people across the UK, that this dirty deal is not only deeply unethical, but it also flies in the face of the laws of this country.
The ruling is a terrible blow to Rishi Sunak’s unconscionable plan to ban refugees based on their mode of arrival and expel them to an uncertain fate in the developing world. The court dismissed the government’s arguments that Rwanda is a safe third country, finding that flaws in its refugee assessment processes risk the return of refugees to further persecution, as the UN refugee agency has insisted from the start. If Rwanda does not meet the bar, the government will be hard pressed to find another suitable partner in the global south.
But paying Rwanda to take human beings from us is beyond the pale. The fact that a policy so contrary to human decency has made it through the British political system and into the courts at all is lamentable. The patent immorality of the scheme is such that it is against “the judgment of God”, according to the archbishop of Canterbury. It is “appalling”, says our new king. A senior UN official describes it as “almost neo-colonial”.
Seen in this light, the scheme’s ineffectiveness as a deterrent, its practical unworkability and its astronomical expense are all beside the point.
The targets of this proposed scheme are people who have made dangerous journeys to Britain because they desperately need our help. They include men and women forced to flee countries such as Afghanistan and Iran after standing up for basic rights that we hold dear here in Britain, such as the freedom to express views about politics and the rights of women to participate in public life.
Our best estimate is that around one in three have been tortured. Freedom from Torture provides clinical services to traumatised survivors at our centres in Birmingham, Glasgow, London, Manchester and Newcastle. Most of the survivors we treat have risked their lives to get here, including via flimsy dinghies or lorries, because safe routes for them simply do not exist. Every day in our therapy rooms, survivors confide in our clinicians their distress that their recovery and safety in this country are under threat from these anti-refugee policies.
This latest ruling brings hope to survivors, but not relief, for the government is determined to keep fighting the case. So it is vital for the public to understand the dire human impacts of this scheme. It involves mass incarceration of asylum seekers, many of whom have already lived through abuses in custody elsewhere, followed by their forcible expulsion to Rwanda, without any fair hearing whatsoever of their asylum case.
As we warned in our intervention, the breakneck speed and pressure of the process creates a serious risk that torture survivors and other vulnerable groups will not be identified and will be bundled on to planes. Contrary to popular belief, they will not be allowed to return to Britain if they are subsequently found to be refugees.
The policy also blows a hole through the heart of the 1951 Refugee Convention and ignores a cardinal lesson from the Holocaust, that refugees must not be forced to secure pre-authorisation before arriving in a state to claim asylum. The court of appeal was unconvinced by this, but most international lawyers agree that the plan breaches the spirit and letter of the convention and a number of other human rights treaties binding on the UK, including the Convention Against Torture.
Such is the gravity and prevalence of these concerns that even some Conservative peers defied the whip last night to back a House of Lords amendment to ensure that the illegal migration bill complies with international law.
At the global level, the government’s refusal to back down on the Rwanda scheme will be regarded as another nail in the coffin of the UK’s reputation as a champion of the international rule of law, after the scandalous attempt to breach the EU-UK withdrawal treaty in a “specific and limited” way. It also risks landing us with heavy blame for the unravelling of the international protection system for refugees, should other states decide to copycat the scheme, as Denmark was poised to do before a new government thought better of it.
Today’s judgment will embolden everyone in Britain who cares about refugees, but the matter should never have reached this stage. When it comes toissues of moral conscience, the courts are merely a backstop. Only by building solidarity and power with refugees can we stop anti-refugee policies at source and defeat the temptation of politicians to scapegoat refugees to distract us from their failings and retain their own power.
More than 550 organisations have now joined the Together With Refugees coalition and our movement calling for a more compassionate approach to refugees is growing stronger every day. Our campaign to force airlines to back out of the Rwanda scheme has already had some success. We have shown that by taking matters into our own hands, we can win.
Sonya Sceats is chief executive of Freedom from Torture
• This article was amended on 29 June 2023 to make it clear that the UK is giving Rwanda money to take asylum seekers, and not receiving cash from Rwanda.
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