Why UK Stopped Rwanda Flight After European Court of Human Rights Ruling

Home Secretary Priti Patel and Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta signed the migration and economic development partnership in Kigali in April 2022. (Flora Thompson/PA)

A Boeing 767 that was set to take seven asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda was grounded at the last moment on Tuesday night after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). But what is the ECHR and why is Britain still bound by it?

In April British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed a deal with Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, Vincent Biruta, which allowed for asylum seekers who had entered the UK illegally—usually involving crossing the English Channel on a people trafficker’s boat—to be sent to the East African country and held there while their claims are processed.

Groups opposed to the Anglo–Rwandan agreement had made a series of legal challenges which whittled down the number of people on the flight from 31 to seven by Tuesday.

Then the ECHR in Strasbourg issued an “interim measure” at 7:30 p.m., which necessitated a series of special sittings in the High Court in London. By 10:15 p.m. the last of the seven passengers had been taken off the specially chartered plane.

The news that a European court could effectively block a British government decision may have come as a shock to many who thought that Brexit had cut the UK loose of European rules.

But the ECHR is part of the Council of Europe and nothing to do with the European Union.

Britain was a founding member of the Council of Europe in 1949 and it has expanded over the years to include many former communist countries in Eastern Europe, the last of which to join was Montenegro in 2007.

The Council of Europe’s remit is to protect human rights, and earlier this year it expelled Russia—which had joined in 1996—following the invasion of Ukraine.

The ECHR, which was set up in 1959, is the highest human rights court in Europe and the 46 members of the Council of Europe are bound by its decisions.

By issuing an “interim measure” in the case of a 53-year-old Iraqi man known only as K.N. the ECHR forbade Britain from deporting him to Rwanda and, by implication, forced the country to abandon any similar deportations until further notice.

K.N. left Iraq in April 2022, travelled to Turkey, and then across Europe before crossing the English Channel by boat. He claimed asylum on his arrival in Britain on May 17.

The High Court in London had already ruled K.N. could come back to Britain from Rwanda but the ECHR argued he faced “a real risk of irreversible harm.”

The ECHR said: “In light of the resulting risk of treatment contrary to the applicant’s convention rights as well as the fact that Rwanda is outside the convention legal space (and is therefore not bound by the European Convention on Human Rights) and the absence of any legally enforceable mechanism for the applicant’s return to the United Kingdom in the event of a successful merits challenge before the domestic courts, the court has decided to grant this interim measure to prevent the applicant’s removal until the domestic courts have had the opportunity to first consider those issues.”

The High Court in London is now expected to conduct a full review of the Rwanda policy in July but it is clear that even if it ruled the policy was lawful, it might be overruled by the ECHR.

The only way Britain could break free of the legally binding decisions of the ECHR would be for it to leave the Council of Europe, a measure which would put it in the same camp as Russia and is politically unthinkable.

PA Media contributed to this report.