UK to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda

Britain will send migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the Channel thousands of miles away to Rwanda under a controversial deal announced Thursday as the government tries to clamp down on record numbers of people making the perilous journey.

“From today... anyone entering the UK illegally as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1 may now be relocated to Rwanda,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a speech near Dover in southeastern England.

“Rwanda will have the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead,” Johnson said.

He called the East African nation with a sketchy human rights record “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognised for its record of welcoming and integrating migrants.”

Johnson was elected partly on promises to curb illegal immigration but has instead seen record numbers making the risky Channel crossing.

He also announced that Britain’s border agency would hand responsibility for patrolling the Channel for migrant boats to the navy.

More than 28,000 people arrived in Britain having crossed the Channel from France in small boats in 2021.

Around 90 percent of those were male and three-quarters were men aged between 18 and 39.

Inhumane

The Rwanda plan swiftly drew the ire of opposition politicians who accused Johnson of trying to distract from his fine for breaking coronavirus lockdown rules, while rights groups slammed the project as “inhumane”.

The United Nations’ refugee agency voiced its strong opposition, with Gillian Triggs, the UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection saying: “People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing.”

European Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari did not directly comment on the British decision but stressed that it “raises fundamental questions about the access to asylum procedures and protection in line with the demands of international law”.

Ghana and Rwanda had previously been mentioned as possible locations for the UK to outsource the processing of migrants, but Ghana in January denied involvement. Instead, Kigali on Thursday announced that it had signed a multi-million-dollar deal to do the job, during a visit by British Home Secretary Priti Patel.