United Kingdom

AlertRefoulement risk and detention of torture survivorsUnited Kingdom

Basis: a unanimous judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; the text of an Act of Parliament passed in answer to it and since repealed; the Committee against Torture’s most recent concluding observations on the United Kingdom; a letter from nine United Nations special procedures on the returns agreement with France, unanswered after nine months; and the depositary record of what the United Kingdom has and has not accepted. The Coalition does not record a practice of torture by the United Kingdom. It records that its highest court found a real risk of refoulement in a removal scheme, that Parliament then legislated to stop any court from asking that question again, that the scheme was abandoned without ever removing anyone by force, and that the treaty body responsible for the prohibition has never been able to hear a complaint from any person about the United Kingdom.

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, 15 November 2023
“As matters stand, the evidence establishes substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that asylum claims will not be determined properly, and that asylum seekers will in consequence be at risk of being returned directly or indirectly to their country of origin. In that event, genuine refugees will face a real risk of ill-treatment in circumstances where they should not have been returned at all.”
Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, as enacted 25 April 2024
“Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country.” A court “must not consider” any claim “that the Republic of Rwanda will or may remove or send a person to another State in contravention of any of its international obligations”. And: “the validity of an Act is unaffected by international law”, in a definition of international law that names the Convention against Torture.
Committee against Torture, 7 June 2019
“Home Office caseworkers very frequently do not apply the appropriate standard of proof applicable to asylum claims and arbitrarily reject credible medical evidence of past torture, resulting in the arbitrary denial of asylum claims made by victims of past torture.” And: “victims of torture are routinely detained for immigration purposes”, under a time limit “still not defined by law”.
Nine United Nations special procedures, 8 December 2025
On the returns agreement with France: its readmission criteria “do not require individualised assessment”; “all those selected for possible removal to France are detained”; and the system “may have the effect of minimising and/or disregarding vulnerabilities”. They asked the United Kingdom to end the agreement. No reply is recorded. This is an allegation put to a state, not a finding.
United Nations Treaty Collection, the depositary record
The United Kingdom made the declaration under article 21 and has never made the declaration under article 22. No person in the United Kingdom can petition the Committee against Torture. The Committee asked it in 2019 to consider changing that.

What an Alert meansDesignated September 10, 2026Review: on any reply to the special procedures on the France agreement, and on the Committee against Torture’s examination of the seventh periodic report, filed August 2023

Why this page is here. The United Kingdom has no part in the United States removal programme, and nothing on this page concerns it. The United Kingdom is here because of its own conduct, judged by the same standard the Coalition applies everywhere: what a state has done, what a court or a treaty body has found about it, and whether a person harmed by it has anywhere to go. The Coalition holds every state to that standard, including the states that write the reports about other states.

What has happened

On 14 April 2022 the United Kingdom published a Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda under which people who arrived to claim asylum would be sent to Rwanda, and their claims decided there. Three courts considered it. The Divisional Court found it lawful. The Court of Appeal, by a majority, found it unlawful. On 15 November 2023 the Supreme Court, unanimously, agreed with the Court of Appeal: there were substantial grounds for believing that people sent to Rwanda faced a real risk of being returned to the countries they had fled. Within six months Parliament passed an Act declaring Rwanda safe and forbidding every decision-maker and every court to conclude otherwise. Over the two and a half years the scheme existed, four people went to Rwanda voluntarily and nobody was removed there by force. On 2 December 2025 Parliament repealed the Act.

In late July 2025 the United Kingdom signed a separate agreement with France under which people arriving by small boat may be detained on arrival, their asylum claims declared inadmissible, and the person returned to France. On 8 December 2025 nine United Nations special procedures wrote to the United Kingdom about it. As of the date of this page, no reply is recorded.

Arrangements. Documented. A Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda, April 2022, replaced by a treaty on 5 December 2023, now spent. An Agreement with France on the Prevention of Dangerous Journeys, July 2025, in force.

Transfers. To Rwanda: four people, voluntarily, and none by force. To France: at least one person by force, in October 2025, on the account put to the government by the special procedures. The Coalition has no verified aggregate figure and publishes none.

Onward return. Investigating. The Supreme Court found a real risk of it from Rwanda. Nobody was sent. The special procedures did not allege onward return from France.

People holding protection. Investigating. The Committee against Torture recorded in 2019 that asylum claims by torture survivors were being arbitrarily refused and that torture survivors were routinely detained.

What the courts found

The Supreme Court’s judgment in R (AAA (Syria) and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department was given by five justices jointly, with no dissent. The test it applied is the one the Convention against Torture uses, and the Court said so: “whether there are substantial grounds for believing that the removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill treatment, as a consequence of refoulement to another country”.

On the assurances Rwanda had given, the Court held that “the court has to make its own assessment of whether there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of refoulement. It is not required to accept the government’s evaluation of assurances”. It accepted that “the government of Rwanda entered into the MEDP in good faith”, and said the question was “not the good faith of the government of Rwanda at the political level, but its practical ability to fulfil its assurances”. It found “a culture within Rwanda of, at best, inadequate understanding of Rwanda’s obligations under the Refugee Convention”. And it concluded, at paragraph 105, that “asking ourselves whether there were substantial grounds for believing that a real risk of refoulement existed at the relevant time, we have concluded that there were”. The Secretary of State’s appeal was dismissed.

The Court also said what it was not deciding. It accepted that Rwanda’s capacity “can and will be built up”, dated its finding to “the relevant time”, and declined to rely on customary international law because it had not been addressed on it. It did not hold that sending asylum seekers to a third country is unlawful in itself. The Coalition reports the judgment at its actual width.

Before any of this, on 14 June 2022, the European Court of Human Rights had indicated an interim measure preventing the removal of one man to Rwanda until three weeks after the final domestic decision in his case. It gave as its reasons the concerns of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that people sent to Rwanda “will not have access to fair and efficient procedures for the determination of refugee status”, the fact that Rwanda is outside the Convention’s legal space, and “the absence of any legally enforceable mechanism for the applicant’s return to the United Kingdom in the event of a successful merits challenge”. That measure was a hold on one removal pending the domestic courts. It ceased to have effect on 6 February 2023 when the High Court quashed the decision to remove him. It is not in force and this page does not describe it as if it were.

What Parliament did in answer

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 25 April 2024. The Coalition quotes its provisions as enacted, because the version now on the statute book is blank.

Section 1(2)(b): the Act “gives effect to the judgement of Parliament that the Republic of Rwanda is a safe country”. Section 2(1): “Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country.” Section 2(4): a court or tribunal “must not consider” any claim “that the Republic of Rwanda will or may remove or send a person to another State in contravention of any of its international obligations”, any claim “that a person will not receive fair and proper consideration of an asylum, or other similar, claim in the Republic of Rwanda”, or any claim “that the Republic of Rwanda will not act in accordance with the Rwanda Treaty”. Those are the three things the Supreme Court had found.

Section 4 preserved a challenge based on “compelling evidence relating specifically to the person’s particular individual circumstances”. Section 4(2) then removed refoulement from it: the individual exception “does not permit a decision-maker to consider any matter, claim or complaint to the extent that it relates to the issue of whether the Republic of Rwanda will or may remove or send the person in question to another State”.

Section 3 disapplied, for decisions under the Act, sections 2, 3 and 6 to 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998, in the terms and to the extent set out in subsections (3) to (5). Section 5(2) provided that “it is for a Minister of the Crown (and only a Minister of the Crown) to decide whether the United Kingdom will comply with” an interim measure of the European Court of Human Rights, and section 5(3) that a court “must not have regard to the interim measure”. Section 1(4) recorded that “the validity of an Act is unaffected by international law”, and section 1(6) defined international law to include, at paragraph (d), “the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984”, and at paragraph (g), “any order, judgment, decision or measure of the European Court of Human Rights”.

The Coalition adds nothing to that text. It notes only that the Act was never applied to a removal. It came into force on the day the Rwanda treaty did, and no one was removed under it. On 1 September 2025 the Home Secretary told the House of Commons that the scheme ran “for two and a half years during which time only four volunteers were sent, so nobody was returned”. On 17 November 2025 her successor put its cost at “£700 million”. Section 40 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 reads, in full: “The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 is repealed.” It took effect on Royal Assent, 2 December 2025.

The returns to France

What follows is an allegation put to the United Kingdom by independent experts, not a finding. The Coalition labels it as such and publishes it because the source can be named and checked, and because no reply has been made.

On 8 December 2025 nine United Nations mandate holders, including the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants and the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, wrote to the United Kingdom about the Agreement with France. They described the mechanism: people arriving by small boat “can be detained immediately and their asylum claim declared inadmissible if the Home Office is of the view that they could have claimed asylum in France”. They observed that the Agreement’s readmission criteria “do not require individualised assessment”, and that “it appears that all those selected for possible removal to France are detained”. They recorded “serious concerns that the abridged system established under the Agreement may have the effect of minimising and/or disregarding vulnerabilities, including evidence of indicators of contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in persons”. They welcomed the exclusion of unaccompanied children, and were concerned about children wrongly assessed as adults.

They set out seven individual cases. One describes a removal, in October 2025, of a man who on the account given was hooded, forced to the ground and held with boots on his neck. The letter put eleven questions to the government, including what undertakings exist about non-refoulement from France, and ended: “we therefore respectfully call your Excellency’s Government to end this agreement with France”. The letter cites no aggregate figure for returns, and the Coalition attaches none to it. The mandate holders did not allege that France would return anyone onward to a country of origin, and this page does not say they did.

What the Committee against Torture has said, and what it has not been able to

The Committee’s most recent concluding observations on the United Kingdom are dated 7 June 2019. They predate the Rwanda scheme by nearly three years. The United Kingdom filed its seventh periodic report in August 2023; the Committee has not yet examined it. Neither the Committee’s list of issues of June 2022 nor the United Kingdom’s own report mentions Rwanda. The Committee against Torture has never pronounced on the scheme, and the Coalition does not suggest otherwise.

What the Committee did say in 2019 bears directly on both grounds of this designation. On asylum decisions, it expressed “serious concern about reports that Home Office caseworkers very frequently do not apply the appropriate standard of proof applicable to asylum claims and arbitrarily reject credible medical evidence of past torture, resulting in the arbitrary denial of asylum claims made by victims of past torture”. On detention, it was “very concerned by reports that victims of torture are routinely detained for immigration purposes”, that the mechanisms for identifying them “are largely ineffective”, and that “the time limit for immigration detention is still not defined by law”. It asked the United Kingdom to review the standard of proof, to compile statistics on people returned despite a claimed risk of torture, which the state does not publish, and to “consider setting in law a reasonable time limit on the duration of administrative immigration detention”. Those are concerns and recommendations, not findings of violation, and no later document has replaced them.

The Committee could not have made a finding of violation in any event. The United Kingdom ratified the Convention on 8 December 1988 and made the declaration under article 21, which accepts complaints from other states. It has never made the declaration under article 22, the one that allows an individual to complain. In 2019 the Committee “encourages the State party to consider making the declaration under article 22”. It has not. No person the United Kingdom has detained, refused or removed can bring that to the Committee.

What runs the other way

The Rwanda policy was upheld by the Divisional Court, and in the Court of Appeal the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon, would have upheld it. He dissented: “The evidence taken as a whole does not support such a real risk in either case”, and “there is no question here of the British authorities simply assuming that the Rwandan asylum system was adequate. On the contrary, the realities were explored and perceived difficulties addressed.” The Supreme Court disagreed with him, and the Coalition reports the Supreme Court. But the dissent was that of the senior judge of England and Wales, and it belongs on this page.

In Othman v United Kingdom, on 17 January 2012, the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the deportation of a man to Jordan on the strength of diplomatic assurances “would not be in violation of Article 3”. It held that “assurances are not in themselves sufficient to ensure adequate protection against the risk of ill-treatment” and must be examined in their practical application, but that “it will only be in rare cases that the general situation in a country will mean that no weight at all can be given to assurances”. The United Kingdom won the article 3 point. It lost on article 6, because of the real risk that evidence obtained by torture would be admitted at his retrial. The Supreme Court in AAA applied the Othman test on assurances and reached the opposite result on the facts before it.

The government’s stated position, given to the special procedures on 11 April 2024, is that “the Government takes its international obligations seriously and our approach is not incompatible with international law”, that “there is nothing in the UN Refugee Convention which prevents relocation to a safe third country”, and that the Supreme Court “did not disturb” the lower courts’ conclusion on that point. That is accurate as far as it goes; the Supreme Court did not decide that question. The government also described the treaty it signed with Rwanda on 5 December 2023 as containing “an undertaking from Rwanda that they will not remove any person relocated under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MEDP) except to the UK”, together with binding obligations on accommodation, food and medical care.

The United Kingdom ratified the Optional Protocol on 10 December 2003, so its places of detention are open to international inspection. It replied to the special procedures’ letters on the Rwanda memorandum, the Rwanda treaty, the Safety of Rwanda Bill and the Illegal Migration Bill, though the first of those took twenty-one months. And it repealed the Act. A Parliament repealing its own conclusive-presumption statute is the strongest correction on this page, and the Coalition records it as such.

What is not established

That anyone was removed to Rwanda by force. Nobody was. Four people went voluntarily. The statement that nobody was ever sent to Rwanda is false, and the Coalition does not make it.

That any United Nations body has found the United Kingdom in violation of the Convention against Torture. None has, and none could have, because no individual complaint against the United Kingdom is admissible.

That the Committee against Torture has addressed the Rwanda scheme or the France agreement. It has not, in any document.

That the Supreme Court held Rwanda unsafe in the abstract, or third-country processing unlawful. It held neither. It found a real risk at the relevant time on the evidence before it, and said the deficiencies might be remedied.

That the European Court of Human Rights has ruled on the merits of either scheme. It has not. Its only intervention was an interim measure in one case, spent since February 2023.

Anything in the special procedures’ letter of 8 December 2025 as fact. It is an allegation. The United Kingdom has not answered it, and until it does the allegation stands unanswered, which is a different thing from standing proven.

Any number of people returned to France. The Coalition has not verified one and publishes none.

What this page does not yet carry

A section naming the organisations in the United Kingdom that act for people facing removal under the France agreement or detention pending it, with contact details that have been checked. It is being built.

The Committee against Torture’s examination of the seventh periodic report, when it happens. This page will be revised the day the concluding observations are issued.

If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.

Sources

Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.

Courts. R (on the application of AAA (Syria) and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42, 15 November 2023, paragraphs 21 to 25, 38, 52, 102 to 105 and 149. The same case in the Court of Appeal, [2023] EWCA Civ 745, 29 June 2023, paragraphs 17 and 109, and the dissent of Lord Burnett of Maldon CJ at paragraphs 524 and 527. Othman (Abu Qatada) v United Kingdom, no. 8139/09, 17 January 2012, paragraphs 186 to 188, 205 and 287. European Court of Human Rights, press releases ECHR 197 (2022) of 14 June 2022 and ECHR 112 (2023) of 11 April 2023, on the interim measure in N.S.K. v United Kingdom, no. 28774/22.

Legislation. Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, as enacted, sections 1 to 5 and 10. Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, c. 31, sections 40 and 65(3)(a).

Parliament. House of Commons, Hansard, 1 September 2025, Borders and Asylum, the Home Secretary; 17 November 2025, Asylum Policy, the Home Secretary; House of Lords, 30 October 2025, the Minister of State. Retrieved through the official Hansard interface.

Committee against Torture. Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of the United Kingdom, CAT/C/GBR/CO/6, 7 June 2019, paragraphs 36 to 37, 52 to 55, 67 and 69. List of issues prior to the seventh report, CAT/C/GBR/QPR/7, 8 June 2022. Seventh periodic report of the United Kingdom, CAT/C/GBR/7, received 15 August 2023.

United Nations special procedures. AL GBR 20/2025, 8 December 2025, on the Agreement with France; OL GBR 9/2022, 1 July 2022, on the Rwanda memorandum; OL GBR 1/2024, 25 January 2024, on the Rwanda treaty; AL GBR 2/2024, 21 February 2024, on the Safety of Rwanda Bill; OL GBR 9/2023, 4 May 2023, on the Illegal Migration Bill; and the United Kingdom’s replies of 11 April 2024 and 21 April 2024. All at the communications database.

Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9 for the ratification of 8 December 1988 and the article 21 declaration, and chapter IV-9-b for the ratification of the Optional Protocol on 10 December 2003.

Compiled 10 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Every quotation was taken from the document itself. Four points in the Coalition’s working notes were corrected before publication: that nobody went to Rwanda, when four people did voluntarily; that the Committee against Torture had addressed deportation with assurances, when its 2019 passage on assurances concerns intelligence sharing; that section 3(2) of the 2024 Act disapplied the Human Rights Act, when it only listed the provisions; and that the repeal was commenced by regulations, when it took effect on Royal Assent. Corrections to the Coalition.