The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Are the UK’s Rwanda asylum moves going to undercut the core human rights protections for the Refugees?

As a drafter and signatory to the Refugee Convention, the UK has a long history of responding to global displacement through resettlement and integration. But its latest ‘Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill’ raised some pressing concerns since it will confirm the status of Rwanda as a third country for refugees arriving in the UK under the Immigration Acts. At this critical juncture, this paper argues that the legislative move of the UK Government to expedite the removal of asylum-seekers to Rwanda by bypassing the courts’ ability to independently scrutinise removal decisions go against the basic principles of the rule of law and the UK’s perennial commitment to international refugee law and human rights principles. Two examples are used to substantiate this argument. First, the Bill will render the implementation of relevant interim protective orders of the European Court of Human Rights discretionary, which are internationally binding on the UK. Second, it will markedly impede the application of the Human Rights Act, which provides legal effect within the UK for the standards set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The significance of this paper lies in exploring the intricacies associated with the UK legal regime and recent practices for the refugees so that they could better align with international law and respond more humanely to the refugee crisis as the consequences otherwise could create an unsafe global society where the dignity and moral claims of refugees are subordinated to legalisms.