High Court rules against applicability of UK's Rwanda plan in Northern Ireland

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) — A court in Northern Ireland ruled Monday that the British government's law on migrant deportations to Rwanda is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights as well as the 2020 EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement and should not be applied.

Justice Richard Humphreys ordered the "disapplication" of the law's provisions in Northern Ireland following a legal challenge brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) and a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran who arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied child, said the judgement.

The court found various elements of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 unlawful, including the removal of asylum seekers and victims of trafficking from the UK to a third country without consideration of their applications.

"I have found that there is a relevant diminution of right in each of the areas relied upon by the applicants," said the judge.

Yaaser Vanderman, a barrister at London-based Landmark Chambers who was instructed by the NIHRC in the case, welcomed the ruling, saying the Court disapplied 10 separate provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

"Overall, a huge case with huge implications," he wrote on X.

In his first reaction to the ruling, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it "changes nothing" about their operational plans to send illegal migrants to the East African nation of Rwanda this July.

"The commitments in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement should be interpreted as they were always intended, and not expanded to cover issues like illegal migration," Sunak was quoted by local media as saying.

The UK dispatched its first failed asylum seeker to Rwanda on April 30 under a pioneering voluntary scheme.

After becoming law in late April, the long-debated legislation seeking to send asylum seekers to Rwanda paves the way for the deportation of thousands of asylum seekers in a matter of weeks.

In January last year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that tackling small boat crossings by irregular migrants across the English Channel was among five priorities of his government as more than 45,000 migrants arrived in the UK that way in 2022.