The head of Europe’s human rights court declared on Thursday that Britain was legally bound to abide by its injunctions, after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s declaration that he would disobey the rulings due to his intention to transfer some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The plan was to send asylum seekers to the nation of East Africa in tiny boats once they arrived at England’s southern coast.
But to stop the initial deportations, the ECtHR granted an impromptu injunction in June 2022 (known as temporary measures under Rule 39). In November of last year, the UK Supreme Court also declared that the program was unconstitutional because of Rwandan systemic flaws.
To overcome this, a bill is going through the British parliament to declare Rwanda safe and give ministers the power to decide whether to comply with injunctions from the ECtHR .
“There is a clear legal obligation under the convention for states to comply with Rule 39 measures,” ECtHR president Siofra O’Leary told reporters in Strasbourg.
Where states had failed to comply with injunctions, issued “in exceptional circumstances where there is a real and imminent risk of irreparable harm”, the court had ruled they had violated the European Convention on Human Rights, O’Leary said.
A spokesperson for Britain’s Home Office, the ministry responsible for immigration policy, was not immediately able to comment.
Despite the legal setbacks, Sunak remains determined to put the Rwanda policy into operation amid pressure from right-wing lawmakers in his Conservative Party and, with an election expected this year, voter concern about thousands of asylum seekers arriving without permission across the Channel.
Almost 30,000 made the journey last year and Britain spends more than 3 billion pounds ($3.82 billion) a year processing asylum applications, with the cost of housing those awaiting a decision running about 8 million pounds a day.
