UK Rwanda asylum plan raises deep concerns, says UN rights chief

Britain’s revived plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda would drastically strip back the courts’ ability to scrutinise decisions and risks dealing a “serious blow to human rights”, the UN rights chief said today, Reuters has reported.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is pushing legislation through parliament that would declare Rwanda to be a safe country for asylum seekers, despite misgivings from some MPs who have attacked the plan as unethical and unworkable. Under the proposals, asylum seekers who arrive on England’s southern coast in small, inflatable boats would be sent to Rwanda to live.

The UN’s Volker Turk said that the current state of the bill, which has yet to pass through the UK’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, would see Rwanda being treated as a “safe country” regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

“You cannot legislate facts out of existence,” said Turk. British courts, he pointed out, have a proven track record of making these decisions thoroughly and should continue to do so. “It is deeply concerning to carve out one group of people, or people in one particular situation, from the equal protection of the law.”

With his Conservative Party trailing in the opinion polls before an election expected later this year, Sunak has invested large amounts of political capital in the Rwanda policy in the hope that it will allow him to fulfil his promise to “stop the boats”.

More than 1,300 asylum seekers have arrived in Britain on small boats so far this year.

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