Canada: Stop Deportation Of Healthcare Worker
Mamadou Konaté is an immigrant worker from the Ivory Coast. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic he worked in facilities accompanying vulnerable seniors. Mamadou Konaté himself was infected with Covid-19 at that time and was unable to obtain health insurance due to his precarious status.
The Canadian government rejected his refugee claims in 2016 and 2021, and issued a deportation order on 19 November 2021. After global mobilization on his behalf, a Canadian federal judge suspended Mr. Konaté’s deportation on 17 November 2021 and issued a stay of deportation while a judicial review was being processed. Mr. Konaté submitted an appeal to the federal court requesting a decision on his application for temporary status on humanitarian grounds on 9 May 2022, and it was denied. Following this decision, Mr. Konaté was promptly summoned by the Canadian Border Services Agency to advance his deportation file by having him sign paperwork for a travel document application at the Ivory Coast embassy. They have now set his new deportation date for 30 September 2022.
For several years, Mamadou Konaté has been living in an anguishing situation marked by four detentions for a period of three and a half months at the Laval Immigration Holding Centre and by the threat of deportation. Mr. Konaté has expressed that he has a fear of returning to Ivory Coast because there are no secure conditions for him to return to a country he fled in 2016 following threats to his life. Mr. Konaté has told Amnesty International that, in 2016, he received an immediate warning that his life was in danger from former members of the rebel group that he says forcibly recruited him in the early 2000s. As a result of this threat he fled to Canada, and should he be deported to Ivory Coast, where former rebel leaders became senior officers in the regular army, there is a serious threat to his life because he left.
In April 1999, the UN Human Rights Committee, after reviewing Canada's implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, noted in its Concluding Observations [Para. 13]:
“The Committee is concerned about the position taken by Canada that it is entitled to invoke the higher requirements of its security to justify the transfer of certain persons to countries where they would be at serious risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The Committee ... recommends that Canada revise its policy in this regard, in order to ... fulfil its obligation never to expel, extradite or otherwise transfer a person to a place where he or she would face a serious risk of treatment or punishment contrary to article 7”
Mamadou Konaté is currently in deportation proceedings as he is considered to be inadmissible to Canada under section 34 (1) (b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as well as article 34 (1) f). These sections state that a person who has been a member of a group that has sought to overthrow a government, or the perpetrator of acts aimed at the overthrow of a government by force is inadmissible to Canada.
Despite the accusations against Mamadou Konaté, which he denies, he still cannot be deported to a country where he faces a serious risk of human rights violations and/or torture. Canadian authorities are obliged to respect the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and ensure he is not deported to face torture, or to deport him to a country where there is a risk that he could be further extradited/refouled back to Ivory Coast. Mamadou Konaté claims to have been forcibly enlisted in a rebel group in the north of the Ivory Coast, as were many young people at the time, during the Ivorian civil war in 2002, to perform household chores.