Updated | Regret the error... non-refoulement is untouched by legal notice

The legal notice issued on Friday that crystallises new rights for asylum claimants, does not not remove Article 14 of the Refugees Act, which prohibits the forced repatriation of asylum seekers.

MaltaToday on Sunday erroneously reported that the legal notice was amending the Refugees Act, when it was instead amending a subsidiariy legislation to the Refugees Act. The newspaper also erroneously reported that Article 14 of the Refugees Act, prohibiting non-refoulement, was being substituted by a new clause - when in fact it was the subsidiary legislation on procedural standards in examining asylum claims that was being amended.

The error is regretted.

Non-refoulement of asylum seekers – the ban on pushing back or removing people to other territories where their lives could be threatened – is an established principle of international law.

Non-refoulement forbids sending back a person who could be a victim of persecution, to a place where they can be persecuted and it is officially enshrined in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol and the Convention Against Torture: all treaties Malta has ratified.

Article 14 of the Refugees Act, the main law, reads that “a person shall not be expelled from Malta or returned in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where the life or freedom of that person would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

Legal Notice 161 adds new rights to asylum claimants by strengthening a piece of subsidiary legislation on how asylum determination officers carry out their examintion of asylum claims.