Essex expert plays key role in Parliamentary report on Rwanda Treaty

The expertise of an Essex Law School academic has helped shape a new Parliamentary report which outlines major concerns about the UK Government’s Rwanda Treaty.

Professor Theodore Konstadinides has been providing both written and oral evidence to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee on the treaty.

The committee has now published its final report on the unsuitability of the plans, citing evidence and guidance given to them by Professor Konstadinides and PhD supervisee, Rebecca Amor.

Concerns raised in the report were further demonstrated when the House of Lords voted in favour of a motion calling for the treaty to be delayed.

Professor Konstadinides said: “Although presented as a policy that will stop the boats, what the treaty does is relocate the problem by moving some asylum seekers to Rwanda - an unsafe country that has failed to protect in the past individuals from refoulment and has a dark record in terms of the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession.

“The renewed treaty with Rwanda laid before Parliament is a positive step to inject some reassurances into the policy to guarantee that asylum seekers will remain there or will be sent back to the UK in certain circumstances.

“However, writing it down cannot guarantee what will happen once the first group of asylum seekers are sent to Rwanda.”

When giving oral evidence in front of the committee, Professor Konstadinides, who is also Co-Director of the Constitutional and Administrative Justice Initiative, called on the government to clarify if its latest proposals allowed the UK’s own courts to intervene in cases where asylum seekers human rights were being abused.

He also echoed concerns about declaring Rwanda a safe country, highlighting the UK Government’s own rebuke of Rwanda for extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture in 2021.

The committee’s report states greater transparency is needed over the Rwanda Treaty and more information is required to allow Parliament to further debate the proposals and vote on them.

Professor Konstadinides added: “The Rwanda case vividly illustrates that foreign affairs can often produce domestic questions of an important constitutional nature.

“This is not merely about due diligence but it also concerns the protection of the rights of individuals who arrive in the UK seeking asylum and the available avenues for redress in case they are wronged by the system, the separation of powers and the rise of the executive to the expense of Parliament and the judiciary, and the UK’s adherence to its international obligations and growing track record of threatening to ignore them.”