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euronews (in English)
  • 17/10/2024
Threats to leave the European Convention on Human Rights are once again circulating in the UK, as the right-wing Conservative Party elects its new leader. How true are the candidates' claims that the convention hinders efforts to control migration?
Transcript
00:00Is the ECHR really blocking the UK from deporting migrants?
00:09Threats to leave the European Convention on Human Rights are once again circulating in the UK
00:14as the right-wing Conservative Party elects its new leader. Some politicians accuse the
00:19European Court of Human Rights of being an obstacle to controlling immigration
00:23because the convention allows asylum seekers to apply to the court to challenge their deportation.
00:28And in some ways it's exactly that. The court protects everyone on European soil,
00:33stopping countries from sending them to places where they could suffer serious human rights
00:37violations. But the claim that the ECHR is blocking the UK from deporting migrants is
00:42not entirely true. The first reason is that the European Court of Human Rights can block
00:47deportations only under very specific circumstances, which is whenever someone
00:53faces a real risk of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment in a third country.
01:00The second reason, and perhaps the even more important reason why that claim is false,
01:05is that the legal principle of non-refoulement is not just based on the ECHR. It is a core
01:12principle of international law. So even if the UK left the ECHR, it would still be bound by other
01:19international obligations and treaties and wouldn't deal with immigration any faster.
01:23If the UK left, it would sit alongside the likes of Russia and Belarus outside the Council of
01:28Europe, which incidentally has nothing to do with the EU. So would there be any benefit to the UK
01:34leaving? It would be a devastating blow to the UK's reputation within Europe and beyond as a
01:40country that accepted basic human rights obligations. It would also cause major
01:44difficulties with the EU in relation to our Brexit deal with them, which implicitly
01:50requires us to continue to abide by the ECHR. And it would also cause problems in relation to
01:54the Good Friday Agreement.

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