London | Portal
The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom declared this Wednesday (15) illegal a controversial government plan to solve the migration issue.
The decision represented quite a setback for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose main goal when he took office was to deal with the record number of expatriates in the country and another victory for humanitarian organizations that have fought against the project from the start. when it was unveiled during Boris Johnson’s government in April last year.
The plan in question is to send illegal asylum seekers to Rwanda, a country in Africa that has the 160th worst human development index in the world, to wait for their claims to be assessed. The government’s aim is to deter thousands of migrants who have crossed the English Channel to reach the coast without permission. In 2022 there were 47,555, a record.
But the project, which not only supports organizations such as the UN and Amnesty International, but also, according to rumors, King Charles III. terror, has suffered defeats ever since. In June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights issued an interim injunction preventing the first flight to Kigali from taking off hours before departure.
The UK Supreme Court concluded on Wednesday that further guarantees were needed to ensure that those sent to Rwanda were not sent back to their country of origin, as this would be a breach of a number of international treaties, including the European Convention on Human Rights, acronym in English).
Sunak did not give up the sentence. “My patience is exhausted and, I think, that of the country too. Therefore, we will take all necessary steps to ensure that we can remove any additional obstacles to the implementation of this policy,” he said.
According to the Prime Minister, these “necessary measures” could include the withdrawal of the UK from the ECHR and other similar treaties. “I don’t think anyone thinks that the founding aim of the ECHR is to prevent a sovereign parliament from deporting irregular migrants to a country considered safe,” the leader said, adding that he intended to do whatever was necessary To enable the first deportation flights to be carried out from March next year.
Officials say there are other options for the government, such as negotiating a new agreement with Rwanda or updating the current agreement to include guarantees that migrants will not be extradited to their home countries. A third alternative would be to add states such as Turkey, Egypt and others to the list of socalled “safe countries,” which would make it easier to reject asylum applications across the board.
The existence of alternatives to circumvent the Supreme Court decision does not soften the political blow it represents. The Conservative Party, the prime minister’s party, is trailing the opposition by 20 points in opinion polls for the 2024 election, and the issue of migration is also expected to remain strong in this election.
Moreover, this is a personal problem for Sunak: after taking over the leadership of the country in October 2022, he promised precisely to “stop the boats.” And Suella Braverman accused the prime minister on Tuesday (12) of not having a plan B in case the Rwandan project was deemed illegal, a day after she was sacked from her post as interior minister.
This year more than 27,000 people arrived on Britain’s south coast without permission. Meanwhile, the cost of housing the 175,000 migrants awaiting a decision on their asylum claims is 8 million pounds (R49 million) per day.