Courts, Channel crossings and the Rwanda plan: A conversation about UK asylum policy

UNSW Kaldor Centre

In June 2023, as the last refugee in Nauru was flown back to Australia, the United Kingdom's attempts to introduce an Australian-style offshore processing policy were dealt a blow in the UK courts. The UK had tried to transfer asylum seekers to Rwanda to have their claims for protection processed there. The British policy reflects that which Australia has operated since 2012, sending people who came by boat seeking safety to Nauru and Papua New Guinea to have their asylum claims processed. But on the 29th of June this year, the England and Wales Court of Appeal ruled that Rwanda was not a safe third country, effectively ending for now, the Government's offshore processing plans. To explain this policy and help us understand the implications of the recent court judgment, Kaldor Centre Senior Research Fellow Madeline Gleeson speaks with Dr. Natalie Hodgson, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Nottingham, and head of the Forced Migration Unit in the university's Human Rights Law Centre.