A family of six attempting to escape Gaza has been granted permission to join their brother in Britain after an immigration judge ruled that the Home Office’s refusal of their application violated their human rights.
The Conservative party’s shadow home secretary Chris Philp stated that the case highlighted the need for changes to human rights laws, so that Parliament, rather than judges, determines who can settle in the UK.
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. According to the UN, human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to work and education. There is no mention of an inherent right to immigrate to any given country.
Earlier this month, The Telegraph reported that an Albanian criminal was allowed to remain in Britain in part because his son refuses to eat foreign chicken nuggets.
An immigration tribunal ruled that requiring the 10-year-old boy to relocate to Albania with his father would be “unduly harsh” due to his sensitivity to food. The only example presented to the court was the child’s dislike of the “type of chicken nuggets that are available abroad.”
The Gazan family—a mother, father, and four children aged seven to 18—submitted their application in January 2024 using the Ukraine Family Scheme’s form, and argued that it best suited their circumstances and that their situation was so “compelling and compassionate” that their application should be considered outside the scheme’s formal rules, i.e. the requirement that they be Ukrainian.
The Ukraine Family Scheme, launched in March 2022, allowed Ukrainian nationals and their family members to come to the UK if they had a relative who was a British citizen or a settled resident. Before its closure in February 2024, the scheme granted approximately 72,000 visas.
According to The Telegraph, the Gazan family’s application was initially rejected by a lower immigration tribunal, which ruled that it fell outside the Ukraine program’s rules (largely because the family did not hail from Kiev – DI) and that it was up to Parliament, not the courts, to determine which countries should be included in resettlement schemes.
However, an upper tribunal judge named Hugo Norton-Taylor overturned the decision and upheld the Gazan family’s appeal under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to family life.
Judge Norton-Taylor ruled that “the respondent’s (Home Office’s) refusal of the collective human rights claim does not, on the particular facts of these cases, strike a fair balance between the appellants’ interests and those of the public.”
The ruling continued: “On a cumulative basis, the weight we attach to the considerations weighing on the appellants’ side of the scales demonstrates a very strong claim indeed. Put another way, there are very compelling or exceptional circumstances. Accordingly, the appellants’ appeals are allowed.”
The Home Office maintained that, despite the ruling, no resettlement scheme exists for people from Gaza and stated it was determined to continue challenging similar claims in the future.
