REFUGEE PROTECTION AND AAA AND OTHERS (2023-4)
Hosted by Border Criminologies and the Refugee Studies Centre (University of Oxford) with The Dickson Poon School of Law (King’s College London).

This series of panel discussions will examine the arguments advanced in R (on the application of AAA and others) v SSHD and analyse its implications for Rwanda, the UK, and for refugee protection more broadly.

Our panels bring together speakers whose expertise and experience makes them uniquely placed to explore the consequences of the Supreme Court’s judgement from a range of jurisdictional, institutional, political and legal perspectives.

Convenors:
Nicola Palmer, Reader in Criminal Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law.
Catherine Briddick, Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law, Refugee Studies Centre.
Chair: Dr Nicola Palmer

Speakers:

Professor Michael Collyer (University of Sussex)

Michael Collyer is Professor of Geography. He was previously lecturer, senior lecturer and reader at Sussex. Michael is primarily a political geographer with an interest in the relationship between people on the move and states. His research focuses on three areas: 1. undocumented migration, detention and return; 2. forced migration, internal displacement and refugee movement; 3. the geopolitics of migration control. He is interested in both applied and theoretical research in all of these areas and has conducted a wide range of research consultancies for UN bodies and national governments as well as regular funded research.

Dr Frank Habineza MP (Member of Rwandan Parliament 2018-2023 and Founding President of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda)

Frank Habineza has served as a Member of Parliament in Rwanda since September 2018 and the Vice President of the Social Affairs Committee. He was a Presidential Candidate in the 2017 Rwandan national elections, representing the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda and has chaired the African Greens Federation (www.africangreens.org), a coalition of political parties from 30 different countries based in Burkina Faso. He served as the Executive Director of this Federation from May 2018 - May 2019 and now acts as an Executive Advisor. Dr Habineza is an environmentalist, human rights, democracy and defence/security expert.

Dr Felix Ndahinda (Researcher and Consultant)

Felix Mukwiza Ndahinda is a researcher, consultant, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Rwanda’s College of Arts and Social Sciences, and Research Advisor for the Research, Documentation, and Policy and Engagement (RDPE) at the Aegis Trust. He previously worked as an Assistant Professor at Tilburg Law School/Tilburg University in the Netherlands and as an Associate Legal Officer for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He holds a PhD from Tilburg University (2009) and an LLM from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights (Sweden-2006). He has lectured and published extensively on the intersections of law and peace, conflict, and justice in Africa, with a focus on the Great Lakes Region.

Dr Uttara Shahani (Refugee Studies Centre)

Uttara Shahani is a historian. She has research interests in the history of colonial South Asia, partitions, refugee regimes, Sindh, and the Sindh diaspora. She is a Departmental Lecturer at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford where she teaches on the postcolonial borders and forced migration and research methods courses.

BACKGROUND
In April 2022, the UK Government and Rwanda entered into a Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This political agreement seeks to enable the ‘transfer’, or forced removal, of asylum-seekers from the UK to Rwanda to have their claims determined there.

In May and June 2022, a group of asylum-seekers who arrived irregularly were told that their asylum claims were not going to be decided in the UK. Instead, they were to be removed to Rwanda to have their claims determined there, in accordance with Rwandan asylum law and procedure. Following the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights, no removals to Rwanda have taken place.

The appellants in AAA and others are asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Sudan, and Albania and the charity, Asylum Aid. They challenge both the lawfulness of the Rwanda policy in general, and the decisions made in each individual case. On 29 June 2023 a majority of the Court of Appeal ruled that the Government’s plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. The Supreme Court’s judgement on the appeal is expected in early 2024.

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