Ghana sued at West Africa's human rights court over US deportations

Advocacy groups have filed a complaint against Ghana at West Africa’s top human rights court, accusing the country of helping the United States deport people to nations where they could face serious harm.

The complaint, filed Monday at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice in Abuja, was brought on behalf of 27 of at least 60 deportees sent to Ghana since September under Washington’s “third-country” removal policy, which targets people US judges have ruled cannot be sent directly to their home countries.

The complaint said the deportees told authorities ‌they had been granted protections in the US, but most of them were removed within hours or days of their arrival in Ghana to the countries they had escaped. Some were stranded in third countries with no means to continue their journeys.

In cases where Washington is barred from sending people to their home countries – after US judges found they would likely face torture or persecution, for example – it has sent deportees to “third countries”.

“No person should be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or serious threats to their dignity and safety,” said Oliver Barker-Vormawor, senior partner at Ghanaian law firm Merton & Everett LLP.

The firm filed the lawsuit alongside Cornell Law School’s Transnational Disputes Clinic and the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a coalition of NGOs.

The court is the top judicial body for ECOWAS, a regional bloc of 12 countries.

Deportees ‘hiding in their home countries’ or in ‘limbo’

The complaint alleges Ghana is violating domestic and regional law by “facilitating removals to unsafe countries”, a statement from the advocacy groups said.

Beyond confirming that the agreement with the US relates to West Africans, Ghana has not shared details of the terms.

Shortly after the agreement took effect, the US reversed visa curbs it had imposed on Ghana.

The advocacy groups said the lawsuit aimed ‌to ‌force Ghana to disclose the terms of the deal with the Trump administration and block Ghana from accepting any future deportees under the arrangement.

A similar lawsuit was filed earlier in June at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to halt US deportations to Equatorial Guinea, which has also served as a way station for African deportees.

That lawsuit was brought on behalf of 14 deportees. They included several still being held in Equatorial Guinea under conditions “amounting to arbitrary and indefinite detention”, according to the indictment.

In the complaint against Ghana, none of the 27 deportees remained in Ghana, the advocacy groups said.

“Many now remain in hiding in their home countries or have fled to third countries where they wait in limbo.”

Beatrice Njeri, a litigator ⁠for the Global Strategic Litigation Council representing the deportees, told the ⁠Reuters news agency they aimed to discourage other ECOWAS members from entering into similar deals with the Trump administration.

Njeri said the group was also seeking at least $100,000 in compensation for each deportee from Ghana, along ⁠with other reparations.