Will UK withdraw from human rights convention?

• Published date: 20 June 2022
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)

A flight chartered to send asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to Rwanda as part of a new government policy was grounded following an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last week

The plan to deport asylum seekers for processing in Rwanda is intended, the Government says, to deter people from making the dangerous journey across the Channel to the UK.

This first flight had been scheduled to take off last Tuesday with just seven passengers on board. There had been more due to fly but legal action enabled them to be removed.

This decision has already sparked a very negative reaction from the UK Government, which says that plans for future flights are already under way.

The ECHR issued specific interim measures ordering the UK authorities not to remove one of the asylum seekers for three weeks after the final decision of judicial proceedings that are ongoing in the UK. This in turn triggered national legal mechanisms that prevented the other six from flying to Rwanda.

Although the measures indicated are temporary, the ECHR can choose to extend them.

Home Secretary Priti Patel pointed out in Parliament that the court did not declare the Rwanda deportation plan to be unlawful...