Groups take Ghana to regional court over US deportation deal
Rights groups say Ghana helped move deportees to unsafe countries under a Trump administration removal policy.
By Lucas Ferreira · Science & Environment Writer
3 min read
Advocacy groups have brought a case against Ghana at West Africa’s main human rights court, accusing the government of assisting United States deportations to places where people could face abuse. The complaint challenges Ghana’s role in the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy, which is used when US courts have blocked direct deportation to a person’s home country.
The case was filed Monday at the Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice in Abuja on behalf of 27 deportees, according to the groups behind the complaint. They say the 27 were among at least 60 people sent to Ghana since September under the US policy.
The complaint says the deportees told officials they had protection from removal in the US. According to the filing, most were then sent from Ghana within hours or days to the countries they had fled, while some ended up stuck in other countries without the means to continue travel.
US authorities use third-country removals in cases where courts have found that returning people to their home countries could expose them to torture, persecution or other serious harm. The complaint argues that Ghana violated domestic and regional law by helping move people onward to unsafe destinations, according to a statement from the advocacy groups.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, senior partner at Ghanaian law firm Merton & Everett LLP, said people should not be sent to places where they face persecution, torture or serious threats to safety and dignity. Merton & Everett filed the case with Cornell Law School’s Transnational Disputes Clinic and the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations.
The ECOWAS court is the top judicial body for the 12-member regional bloc. The groups are asking the court to make Ghana disclose the terms of its arrangement with the Trump administration and stop the country from accepting further deportees under the deal.
Ghana has confirmed that its agreement with the US concerns West Africans, but it has not released the details, according to the complaint and the groups. Shortly after the arrangement began, Washington lifted visa restrictions it had placed on Ghana.
The groups said none of the 27 people named in the Ghana case remains in the country. They said many are now hiding in their home countries or are in third countries awaiting an uncertain outcome.
Beatrice Njeri, a litigator for the Global Strategic Litigation Council who represents the deportees, told Reuters that the case is also meant to deter other ECOWAS members from making similar agreements with the Trump administration. Njeri said the deportees are seeking at least $100,000 each in compensation from Ghana, along with other reparations.
The Ghana filing follows a similar case brought earlier in June at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights over US deportations to Equatorial Guinea. That case was filed on behalf of 14 deportees, including several who remained detained in Equatorial Guinea under conditions the complaint described as arbitrary and indefinite detention.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.