From Solidarity to Exclusion: The ‘Safe Country’ Concept in UK Asylum Law and the Irony of Borders

This article argues that the asylum policy and legislative changes introduced by the UK government in the years 2022–2024 altered the original meaning of the concept ‘safe country’ as understood in international and EU law. The UK modified this concept, which from a solidarity concept became a means of exclusion, and which negatively affects the lives and rights of people seeking asylum in the UK. Using a doctrinal approach, the first part of this article sets the legal and historical context of the concept ‘safe country’. Departing from the analysis of the Refugee Convention, the article discusses how this mechanism was used by the EU legislation. From an idea of solidarity among EU Member States, it shifted from responsibility-sharing to burden-sharing while still allowing some guarantees to people seeking asylum. Using content analysis, the second part of this article evaluates the legal requirements set by the UK legislation together with implications of applying the ‘safe country’ concept to the asylum claims. It argues that, in recent years, the UK Government used the term ‘safe country’ as synonym of two (possibly three) different concepts, such as ‘first safe country’ and ‘safe third country’. It also shifted and pushed its meaning beyond the current commonly agreed interpretation of the term because it eroded the requirement of a link between the person seeking asylum and the ‘safe country’. Thus, the UK legislation deviated even further from the rationale underlying the Refugee Convention, international human rights standards and EU legislation because it passed the obligation to assess asylum claims to states with no link to people seeking asylum and without adequate risk assessment. The final part of this article discusses the limit to this policy and analyses the legal battle between the UK Parliament, the Government’s executive power, the UK Supreme Court and the Belfast High Court, which barred the UK Government from deporting people seeking asylum to a third country. This article concludes that there is some irony in the fact the term ‘safe country’ has been weaponised as a bordering tool by the UK Government, but ‘a border’ between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is limiting the negative effect of the concept ‘safe country’ on the very same people that is attempting to exclude from protection.