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Rwanda Policy – Our legal fight to prevent injustice

The government’s planned forced removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda tramples over their rights and the rule of law.

The government plans to:

  • side-step its own commitment to case-by-case decisions
  • have impossibly tight timeframes for people to make their case
  • risk people being removed without effective legal advice
  • treat Rwanda as a “safe third country” when evidence shows it is not

At Asylum Aid, we’re determined to stop this unfair practice, so people get a fair process, a fair hearing, and a fair outcome.

Please help us raise the legal costs of bringing this vitally important challenge by contributing to our Crowdjustice Campaign.

We would like to thank our generous donors including Law for Change, Choose Love, and supporters on CrowdJustice for supporting our legal challenge against the Rwanda plan.

 

On 13-14 October 2022, we challenged the government in the High Court.

We argued that process of removing people to Rwanda is unfair. It gives people seeking asylum an impossibly short time span – just 7 days if they are in detention – to make their case and get to Court, with no right to make representations on the general safety of Rwanda.

The High Court ruled that there was nothing inherently unfair about this short-cut timescale.

The ruling said that individuals have no right to argue that Rwanda is generally unsafe, and they don’t need to have a lawyer to make their case.

Even the Home Office recognised that people facing removal need lawyers.

 

We’re fighting back in the Court of Appeal, 24-27 April

We’ll be challenging the ruling that the short-cut process for deciding who is sent to Rwanda is fair and lawful.

Now more than ever it is important that we fight the Rwanda plan. The government’s new Illegal Migration Bill relies on the inhumane model of removing people to “safe third countries” like Rwanda.

 

Media enquiries: media@asylumaid.org.uk