R (on the application of AAA and ors) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department (UNHCR intervening)

The court concluded that it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than the United Kingdom. On the evidence before this court, the government has made arrangements with the government of Rwanda which are intended to ensure that the asylum claims of people relocated to Rwanda are properly determined in Rwanda. In those circumstances, the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is consistent with the Refugee Convention and with the statutory and other legal obligations on the government including the obligations imposed by the Human Rights Act 1998.

However, the Home Secretary must consider properly the circumstances of each individual claimant and has not done so in the case of the eight individual claimants. For that reason, the decisions in those cases will be set aside and their cases will be referred back to the Home Secretary for her to consider afresh.

The full judgment can be found here and a press summary here.

Lord Pannick KC, Sir James Eadie KC, Mark Vinall, instructed by the Government Legal Department, for the Defendant.

Sam Grodzinski KC, Paul Luckhurst, Jason Pobjoy, Emmeline Plews, Will Bordell, Rayan Fakhoury, instructed by Duncan Lewis, for various Claimants, including AAA (Syria), AHA (Syria), AT (Iran), The Public and Commercial Services Union, Detention Action, Care4Calais, AAM (Syria), NSK (Iraq).

Charlotte Kilroy KC, Harry Adamson, instructed by Leigh Day for the Claimant, Asylum Aid.