Published on 06/12/2023
British Home Secretary James Cleverly has signed a new treaty to send asylum seekers to Rwanda after the United Kingdom’s top court declared the deportation scheme unlawful.
The agreement was signed by Cleverly, who travelled to Rwanda’s capital Kigali on Tuesday, and Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta.
The treaty signed in Kigali came ahead of “emergency legislation” to push through the policy set to be introduced in Westminster as soon as this week to overcome a UK Supreme Court ruling that the Rwanda policy is unlawful. Cabinet ministers have been bitterly divided over the extent to which the legislation should attempt to extricate the UK from its obligations to refugees under domestic and international law.
Cleverly said he expected migrants to start arriving in the coming months.
“I can see no reason why that should not happen,” he told reporters in response to a question about whether a plane would soon be carrying asylum seekers to the African nation.
The Rwanda Plan is at the centre of the government’s strategy to cut migration and is being watched closely by other countries considering similar policies.
But the UK’s Supreme Court last month ruled that such a move would violate international human rights laws enshrined in domestic legislation.
Since that ruling, Britain has been seeking to renegotiate its agreement with Rwanda to include a binding treaty that it would not expel asylum seekers sent there by Britain – one of the court’s major concerns.
“Rwanda cares deeply about the rights of refugees,” Cleverly said as he arrived in Kigali on Tuesday morning. “I look forward to meeting with counterparts to sign this agreement and further discuss how we work together to tackle the global challenge of illegal migration.”
Alain Mukuralinda, deputy spokesman for Rwanda’s government, said the two countries would “set up a joint tribunal with both Rwandan and UK judges in Kigali … to make sure that none of the immigrants sent to Rwanda is deported to their country.”
