“The reality is, it seems very unlikely that there is a mechanism to provide any form of recourse, so we cannot really get a binding decision from the International Court of Justice on whether this policy compliance,” she said, of Australia’s approach to detaining asylum seekers arriving by boat.
In 2015, one The Times editorial board essay describing Australian policies as “unconscionable,” as well as “inhumane, unclear about legitimacy, and completely contrary to the country’s tradition of welcoming those fleeing persecution and war.”
Those same policies appear to be handbooks to proposed legislation in the UK that would give the Home Office the “duty” to remove nearly all migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats, like My colleague Megan Specia reports.
The proposed law would allow the government to quickly arrest and deport anyone who “violates immigration controls,” the bill reads. “The main thing they have in common is that they seek to criminalize, quasi-asylum, or at least undermine the right to asylum,” said Ms Foster, legal scholar on UK and Australian policy. .
“Australian policy has been around for a long time with the view that if a person arrives without prior authorization — and regardless of whether the individual is a refugee or not — they are somehow going to get it,” she said. are doing the wrong thing. “They are illegal, they are illegal, they are ‘unauthorized navigation.’”
Even the three-word slogan was the same: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared on Tuesday behind a podium decorated with the rallying slogan “Stop the boat”. Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia, used exactly the same language to advance its policy a decade ago.
As in Australia, this policy has questionable legality. On the first page of the proposed bill, Suella Braverman, the UK Home Secretary, writes that she “cannot make a statement” that the bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. (The proposed law that follows the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is now being challenged in court.)
