Home secretary’s address in Washington will urge reform of UN convention and has already prompted concern from charities
Suella Braverman will appeal on Tuesday to world leaders and political thinkers to consider rewriting key refugee rules so they are “fit for the modern age”.
The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, claimed in June that the UK government’s £140m deal with Rwanda was “incompatible with the letter and spirit” of the convention. “A world where the UK and other western nations pull up the drawbridge and turn their backs on those who have been tortured, persecuted and faced terror because of their gender, sexuality or any other reason, is a world which turns its back on a belief in shared humanity and shared rights,” he said.
The home secretary will argue that case law arising from the convention has lowered the threshold so that asylum seekers need only prove that they face “discrimination” instead of a real risk of torture, death or violence. “However, as case law has developed, what we have seen in practice is an interpretive shift away from ‘persecution’, in favour of something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’.”
“The vast majority have passed through multiple safe countries, and in some instances have resided in safe countries for several years,” she will say.