The tightrope Rishi Sunak walks between practical politics and the right wing of his party leads today to Iceland, where he will try to persuade the president of the European Court of Human Rights that its rule 39 should not be used to prevent Britain deporting refugees to Rwanda. Rule 39 allows the court to order “interim measures” to avoid what it considers “a real risk of serious and irreversible harm” – usually to someone about to be expelled or extradited to another country. The UK has obtained assurances from its own High Court that Rwanda is a “safe country” for refugees, even though 12 of them (from neighbouring DR Congo) were shot dead by Rwandan police in 2018 and Rwanda is widely recognised to be a police state. As things stand, moderate UK Conservatives (among others) worry that the Illegal Migration Bill passing through parliament will break international law.
