The UK’s New Rwanda Policy: Absence of Legality, Morality, and Ethicality

The UK’s Rwanda Policy Explained

The government has introduced this new immigration policy in an attempt to combat the vast numbers of people trying to reach the UK by small boats, to seek asylum. The collection of data by the Ministry of Defence concerning the number of migrants and boats evidences that from the 16th May to the 22nd May 2022 685 migrants and 17 boats were detected trying to make the crossing. 28,526 people are known to have made the crossing in 2021, a dramatic and concerning increase compared to 8,404 in 2020. And according to Border Force union officials, this year’s statistic is expected to be much higher. And while this route appears popular, it is also very dangerous.

The trial of this policy, costing a considerable £120 million upfront, it must be noted, will focus primarily on single men arriving by boats or lorries. It is designed to be a deterrent against the business model of “vile people smugglers” and to stop the ocean from turning into a “watery graveyard” in the words of the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

The policy means that people wanting to seek asylum in the UK will be sent to Rwanda for their asylum cases to be processed. And if their asylum claims are successful then they would have long-term accommodation in Rwanda, and not be returned to the UK. The policy is encompassed by the very problematic Nationality and Borders Bill, which itself has been the subject of large amounts of criticism.

Recent Legal Challenges

The first flight of the new policy was scheduled to take off from a military airport in Wiltshire on Tuesday 14th June at 22:30. However, this was prevented after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that just one passenger, an Iraqi man named KN, faced “a real risk of irreversible harm” if he stayed on the flight to Rwanda. This triggered appeals to be launched for the other passengers, which meant ultimately all the passengers’ removal orders were scrapped.

The European Court of Human Rights’ ruling was based on a few considerations. Firstly, the court disagreed with the High Court in the UK, which found that if KN’s case against the entire Rwandan transportation policy succeeded then he could just be returned to the UK. Finding instead that a legally enforceable mechanism was absent for KN to be returned to the UK. Additionally, comments made by the UN raising concerns that people seeking asylum in the UK sent to Rwanda would not have access to a “fair and efficient” procedure which determines their refugee status, were highlighted by the court in Strasbourg. But the European Court of Human Rights did also note the UK High Court’s acknowledgement of serious issues concerning the assessment of Rwanda as a safe country.

However, before the case came before the court in Strasbourg, many attempts were made to stop the initial flight by many charities in the domestic courts.

At the end of May 2022, Asylum Aid outlined its legal case against the Rwanda plan in a letter to the Home Office. Their main arguments were:

That it is based on a blanket assessment of Rwanda as a ‘safe’ country, which goes against the government’s commitment to case-by-case decision-making;
It involves such tight timeframes – only seven days for each asylum seeker to obtain legal advice and to present their case – that the process is inherently flawed and unfair;
Gives rise to a real risk that individuals may be removed to Rwanda without having had effective access to legal advice and courts.

Then on the 9th of June 2022, the legal team representing Care4Calais, Detention Action, and PCS issued judicial proceedings at the High Court challenging the Home Office’s plan to remove those seeking asylum to Rwanda. They argued the Rwanda policy and the removal of four specific individuals to be unlawful for several reasons:

The lack of legal authority of the Home Secretary Priti Patel to carry out the removals.
The irrationality of Priti Patel’s conclusion that Rwanda is a safe third country.
The lack of measures to protect asylum seekers removed to Rwanda from malaria.
The lack of compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) also intervened, with their analysis finding the plan to be unlawful and that by carrying it out the UK would not be fulfilling its legal obligations as a signatory state to the Refugee Convention.

The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, found it “very surprising” that the Strasbourg court had intervened after domestic courts had ruled to allow the flight. The minister also commented these “repeated legal barriers” had similarities to those faced in other deportations. However, the Home Secretary continued to show her determination to deliver the policy, which she recognised would “not be easy to deliver”, by adding “Our legal team are reviewing every decision made on this flight and preparation for the next flight begins now,”. But while the minister found surprise in the intervention, James Wilson from the campaign group Detention Action found this rare intervention by the court in Strasbourg “shows how potentially dangerous” the removals to Rwanda are.

The Criticism

The criticism of this policy can be classified into 2 main categories: legality, and ethics and morality.

Firstly, ethics and morality. The Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, commented “This is not the mark of a civilised society. It’s evil”. And Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition and the Labour Party, labelled the scheme “unworkable, unethical and extortionate”. While the first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, tweeted that he found the plans to be “cruel and inhumane”.

Additionally, 160 charities and campaign groups have signed an open letter which calls for the government to scrap the policy, described in the letter as “shamefully cruel”. The Refugee Council also made the point that “these measures would do little to stop desperate people making dangerous journeys to the UK, because they do absolutely nothing to address the reasons people come.”

While the chief executive of Refugee Action, Tim Naor Hilton, added accusatorily that the government was “offshoring its responsibilities on to Europe’s former colonies instead of doing our fair share to help some of the most vulnerable people on the planet”. Tim Naor Hilton also highlights the UK should have learnt from “Australia’s horrific experiment”, this is about the Australian asylum processing policy which is covered in the next section.

Another point of criticism in the plan is the human rights record of the Rwandan government and the country’s president, Paul Kagame. Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, Steve Valdez-Symonds, said the sending of people seeking asylum in the UK to another country was “the very height of irresponsibility” and he additionally emphasised it was”one with such a dismal human rights record”.

And even the UK government at the UN last year expressed concern over “continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom” in Rwanda. However, since that, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described Rwanda as being one of the safest countries in the world, adding there was a “risk of stereotyping”.

Secondly, the legality. Concerns about the legality are evidently raised and argued by the charities launching legal challenges to the policy, with their arguments clearly featured in the bullet points in the section above.

In addition to the legal arguments, Dr Niovi Vavoula, who is a lecturer in migration and security at Queen Mary University School of Law, said she anticipated the international legal principle of non-refoulement to be the subject of many legal challenges. Non-refoulement is a fundamental element of international law that forbids a country receiving people seeking asylum from returning them to locations where they could be subject to violence and the denial of their fundamental rights.

International Comparisons

This policy is most similar to the Australian method of asylum processing. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, since 2013 3,127 people seeking asylum have been forcibly transferred by the Australian government to offshore processing camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports individuals and families with children experienced years of living in substandard conditions in the centres, and that they also suffered severe abuse, inhumane treatment, and medical neglect.

The policy of offshore processing inflicts not only human suffering, but also a significant financial cost. This is demonstrated by the estimated cost, according to Human Rights Watch, to the Australian taxpayer of US$6.2billion between 2014-2020 on offshore processing. And the annual cost of detaining one person seeking asylum is US$2.5million.

But it also must be highlighted that in 2015 the UN accused Australia of violating the Convention Against Torture due to the dangerous and violent conditions of the facilities on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea where people seeking asylum were being held. And then in 2017, the Manus Island camp was found to be illegal and the Australian government was made to pay AU$70million to the 1,905 people who had been unlawfully detained there as compensation.

Most importantly, what can we apply from this comparison to the UK’s situation? Well, the example of Australia completely contradicts the government’s argument that this policy acts as a deterrent for people wanting to cross the English Channel by boat. Since the statistics show that in the first full year after offshore processing was introduced in Australia, 2012, more people arrived in Australia to seek asylum by boat than at any other time in their history or since.

And I believe it is reasonable to raise similar concerns as those found in offshore processing facilities in Papua New Guinea. The Refugee Council of Australia raises issues concerning how officials conducted the decision process if someone was to be considered a refugee or not. These issues include denying people the right to choose their lawyer or denying access to information necessary for ensuring independent and fair decision-making. With a summarising description of the process as “complex and opaque”.

Effective and Appropriate Solutions

I’d like to begin this section by highlighting the included comment from The Refugee Council of “these measures would do little to stop desperate people making dangerous journeys to the UK, because they do absolutely nothing to address the reasons people come.” And they went on to add “The Government must immediately rethink by having a grown-up conversation with France and the EU about sharing responsibility and look to operating an orderly, humane, and fair asylum system.”

I wanted to highlight those comments because I believe they hit the nail on the head with what an effective and appropriate solution needs to include:

Addressing the reasons people come.
Having a grown-up conversation with the EU, especially France about sharing responsibility.
Operating an asylum system which is orderly, humane, and fair.

Therefore let’s discuss the changes which need to be made for the UK government to satisfy these requirements.

Firstly, to help address the reasons people come in the first place I believe the UK needs to adopt a new foreign policy toward countries facilitating war, at the brink of war or currently at war. I argue the change should mean that the UK works purely diplomatically to encourage peace, possibly demonstrated by the hosting of peace negotiations between the fighting parties. This also includes the complete abolition of militaristic intervention or support, since that only facilitates war and therefore further destruction. This could be applied to the current example of the UK selling arms to Saudi Arabia, which are then used by Saudi-led forces in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has led an intervention in their civil war since the 26th of March.

Secondly, since Brexit in 2016, the government have been fueled by the idea of “taking back control” and whatever that means. And instead of taking responsibility for the people trying to reach the UK who are forced into refugee camps in northern France due to the lack of safe routes available to them, the UK government has continued to sign cooperation agreements with the French government to stop the crossings. These agreements involve financial support from the UK to France to increase police patrols, surveillance technologies, and border security infrastructure. Therefore a grown-up conversation with France would see the UK accepting their obligations to help these people and seeking agreements facilitating the creation of safe and effective routes for people wanting to seek asylum to reach the UK.

And last, but certainly not least, an orderly, humane, and fair system would need to feature the safe and effective routes suggested above. Additionally, a fair system would mean changing how they are treated while their asylum claims are being processed. For example, a person seeking asylum should have the right to work while their asylum claims are considered so that their talents and skills aren’t wasted and they are not forced to rely on state support to live, which is only £5.84 per day.

Conclusions

It is evident from the criticism and concerns raised that this plan of removing people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda is absent of legality, morality, and ethicality. And it can be clearly observed from the Australian system the shocking realities of this practice and the fact this policy does not discourage the use of boats as a method of arrival.

This policy can also evidently be seen as a way for Boris to look like he’s fulfilling his Brexit campaign promise of “taking back control”, which he hopes will satisfy conservative voters and distract them slightly from his scandal-ridden time as prime minister. With Johnson’s recent resignation meaning, he may have hoped this is what voters remember him for, “getting Brexit done” which was the conservative slogan in the 2019 general election. However, the impacts of Brexit have been in no way positive, but to Boris Johnson, such a fact appears irrelevant.

But what I hope is a takeaway from this article is the ways I have outlined in which I believe the UK should operate a fair and humane asylum processing system. But saddeningly, I believe we will not see a fair or humane system of asylum processing under this government due to the distinct lack of compassion and care they have displayed, in conjunction with their seeming fundamental misunderstanding of the appropriate way to “help” people.