A last-minute legal battle is under way over the UK government’s first flight transporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) says it has blocked the removal of one of seven passengers due to depart on Tuesday night.

An out-of-hours judge is currently examining the remaining half dozen cases and it is not clear whether the court will block the entire flight.

The UK usually follows emergency court rulings not to remove people.

In a statement hours before the flight’s planned departure, the ECtHR said it had granted an “urgent interim measure” in the case of an Iraqi man, known only as “KN”.

The man, who is in his fifties, left Iraq earlier this year and crossed the English Channel to reach the UK, rather than claiming asylum in another European country. Doctors have since said he may have been a victim of torture.

KN’s lawyers petitioned the ECtHR on Monday after a judge in London refused to stop his inclusion on the flight.

The European court has indicated KN should not be removed to Rwanda until three weeks after the final decision over the policy is made in the UK courts.

The ECtHR said that requests such as these were only granted on an “exceptional basis, when the applicants would otherwise face a real risk of irreversible harm”.

That decision contradicts a ruling by judges in London, who had found no immediate risk to anyone sent to Rwanda.

A High Court judge ruled last Friday that there should be a full review of the Rwanda removals policy – but that the Home Secretary Priti Patel would be acting lawfully if in the meantime she sent some asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Should the policy be found to be unlawful some people could be returned to the UK from Rwanda.

The ECtHR, based in Strasbourg, said that its decision had been influenced by concerns raised by the UN’s refugee agency that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda may not be able to get a fair hearing or would be left in unsafe conditions.

On Monday the UK highest court, the Court of Appeal, ruled that the first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda could go ahead, backing the decision of the High Court that it was in the “public interest” for the government to carry out its policies.

Earlier on Tuesday, four of the men due to be on the flight saw individual appeals to the High Court rejected.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss insisted the flight would take off on Tuesday, but later a Downing Street spokesman said given the legal challenges he could not be definitive of whether the flight would take place that day.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also defended the scheme and said the government may “very well” need to change the law to help.

The policy has been criticised by human rights organisations, charities and the Church of England, with concerns being raised about Rwanda’s human rights record.

But ahead of the first plane’s arrival, Rwanda’s government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said the plan was neither immoral nor a punishment and needed to be given a chance as Africa was not just a place of problems but also “a place of solutions”.

World Opinions – BBC News

L’article Rwanda asylum plan: Last-minute legal battle over flight est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

These are the only rational and humane conclusions to be drawn from dramatic events at a London coroner’s court this week, where it was recorded that exposure to air pollution was among the causes of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah’s death from asthma in February 2013 – a finding that has never before been recorded by a coroner with regard to the death of an individual.

The verdict is a victory for Ella’s mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, who, with the support of lawyers and medical reports, pushed hard for an earlier inquest verdict to be quashed. In the years leading up to her daughter’s death, Ms Kissi-Debrah lived with Ella and her siblings in Lewisham, within 30 metres of the South Circular road, where nitrogen dioxide emissions regularly exceeded national and EU legal limits. Ella was hospitalised 27 times in the three years before she died. Yet her mother was not warned by doctors, nor by any more general public health messaging, about the elevated risk to her asthmatic daughter from air pollution, the vast majority of it produced by traffic fumes.

Public understanding of the dangers has moved on as the issue of air pollution has risen up the political and environmental agenda; so have the government’s ambitions. In 2018 Michael Gove, who was then environment secretary, produced a clean air strategy that promised “comprehensive action”, after the government’s air pollution policy was ruled illegal for the third time, in a series of cases brought by the activist organisation ClientEarth.

This week’s ruling that pollution was a factor in the death of a nine-year-old Londoner, Ella Kissi-Debrah, must be a watershed

But ministers’ words, in this case, spoke louder than actions. Responsibility for new clean air zones was delegated to cash-strapped councils, which have deferred implementation. Deaths linked to air pollution in the UK are estimated to be as high as 36,000 a year, while current limits for particulate matter are two and a half times higher than the World Health Organization recommends. And while the greenhouse gases produced by air traffic have a much more diffuse environmental impact than the localised effects of road traffic, the government’s anti-pollution credentials are diminished by their refusal – so far – to rule out either a third runway at Heathrow (whose backers this week won a victory at the supreme court) or numerous regional airport expansion plans.

Last month’s announcement that the government will bring forward a ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2030 was a big step forward. So is the recent stronger emphasis on policies to promote cycling and walking. The unusual opportunity to experience quieter, cleaner cities was among the handful of positives to be salvaged from this difficult year of immobility and separation. To their credit, ministers have supported efforts to prolong the effects with the roll-out of low traffic neighbourhoods.

The government must now go further. Supporting schemes to make the roads outside schools car-free is one thing; confronting the motor industry and getting serious about the kinds of shifts in behaviour, culture and technology that are needed to substantially reduce congestion and pollution is another. Increasing the cost of driving relative to other forms of transport, and giving more space to people on foot and on bicycles, is not universally popular. But, as the photographs shared by Ella Kissi-Debrah’s family of their smiling, bright-eyed girl remind us, air pollution kills.

By The Guardian view

L’article View on air pollution risks: make Ella’s experience count est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.