Asylum

Northern Ireland’s High Court has determined that the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) may have breached its duty towards an asylum seeker in failing to provide her with a timely and accessible weekly allowance payment for a period of almost two months. The applicant was an as

The High Court has held that the parents of a child who was awaiting a decision on his international protection status did not have the right to work in the State while the application was being processed. It was said that the child had the right to access the labour market and that this could be ef

New UK government plans to deport asylum seekers who arrive irregularly and exclude them from modern slavery and human rights protections have been sharply criticised by lawyers and human rights campaigners. Home Secretary Suella Braverman KC yesterday introduced the Illegal Migration Bill, which pr

David Leonard BL explores internal relocation in the context of EU asylum law. Internal relocation is governed by EU law. Article 8 of the Qualification Directive states that Member States may rely on it. Is it discretionary? Transposing Article 8 to allow reliance on internal protection is discreti

UK government plans to address the asylum claim backlog by asking around 12,000 applicants to complete a new questionnaire risks introducing "more injustice" into the asylum seeker, human rights campaigners have warned. According to reports, the Home Office is to begin sending an 11-page questionnai

Ukrainian refugees in Ireland will benefit from a 12-month extension to their temporary protection permissions, the government has announced. Some 75,000 people fleeing the war in Ukraine have been granted temporary protection in Ireland since 9 March 2022. Each permission is granted for a period of

Northern Ireland’s High Court has dismissed an application for judicial review where an applicant who had exhausted his asylum appeals was denied a government-issued card which included identifying details. The applicant, a 29-year-old man originally from Somalia, had been seeking asylum in th

The UK government's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda is lawful, the High Court in London has ruled. The court ruled yesterday that the scheme did not fall foul of the UN's Refugee Convention on human rights laws.

Stephen Kirwan explores the potential impact of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Camara v Belgium on the approach of the Irish authorities to the accommodation of international protection applicants. In the first case of its kind, the European Court of Human Rights recently gran

The Immigrant Council of Ireland has joined calls on the government to provide clarity to those who applied for the Afghan admissions programme and have not yet received a decision. Only a small number of approvals have been issued under the Afghan admission programme despite 528 applications being

A scheme designed to bring 500 people from Afghanistan to Ireland has been criticised after the first tranche of just 22 approvals was issued nearly a year after it was set up.

Children's rights experts have called on the Home Office to end the use of hotels as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers in Northern Ireland. The Children's Law Centre and South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP) issued a joint statement after Belfast South MP Claire Hanna raised concerns ab

Judges must verify on their own initiative that migrants and asylum seekers are being detained lawfully, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled. The court today handed down its judgment in a case referred by the Netherlands Council of State and the District Court of The Hague, w

The High Court has quashed a decision by the International Protection Appeals Tribunal (IPAT) which refused international protection to a Muslim man who claimed to be persecuted for working in the beef trade in India. The man was previously attacked by cow vigilantes who wanted him to stop his work

Nearly 86,000 asylum applications remain outstanding more than six months after having been submitted to UK authorities, according to new figures. The latest statistics from the Home Office show there are 85,917 outstanding cases, with the number of asylum decisions still below pre-pandemic levels.