The United Kingdom reinforces its migration agreement with Rwanda
The British Home Secretary, James Cleverly, will sign a strengthened migration treaty with Rwanda this Tuesday with the confidence of being able to solve the judicial obstacles that have frustrated his strategy to send asylum seekers to the African country.. The revised bilateral agreement, which will be signed in Kigali, is one of the essential gears of Rishi Sunak's Government's 'plan b' to relaunch refugee flights to the Rwandan capital.
The Rwanda plan stalled without taking off. Several refugees got off the plane chartered to a Spanish company before the preventive decision of the European Court of Human Rights, in spring 2022. The policy was finally declared illegal by the British Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling three weeks ago.
The new pact elevates to the legal category of an international treaty the agreement designed by London to entrust Kigali with the processing of migrants arriving in the United Kingdom through unofficial routes, in particular, by boats through the English Channel.
Cleverly will present the document in the Westminster Parliament prior to the processing in both chambers of an emergency law that will define Rwanda as a safe country in the field of migration.. It will be the second piece of Sunak's plan to protect the initiative from future legal action that prevents exporting asylum seekers to Africa. Its ministers and spokespersons also reiterate that Austria, Italy, Germany and Denmark are contemplating strategies similar to the controversial British policy.
The renewed political-commercial understanding between London and Kigali must include guarantees to resolve the issues raised by the Supreme Court judges regarding deficiencies in the Rwandan immigration system and the risk of genuine refugees being deported to their country of origin.. This would violate the so-called principle of 'non refoulement' (non-refoulement), which recognizes the right of an asylum seeker not to be returned to a country where his or her life is in danger or where he or she may suffer mistreatment and torture.
Legal experts doubt the practical effect of the legislation proposed by the Executive, the content of which has not yet been revealed.. Among them, lawyer David Allen Green explains in his blog 'The Empty City' the magnitude of the resolution of the highest British court that considers, among other legal facts, the “principle of non-refoulement” as a “customary international law.” binding and unalterable. “No legislation introduced by the government will allow this rule to cease to apply in the United Kingdom,” observes the lawyer, in line with those who anticipate new legal processes to stop the delivery of refugees to Rwanda.
This week Sunak brandishes his immigration plan B that he had promised when receiving the blow from the Supreme Court. The offensive began on Monday with the announcement of the tightening of restrictions on work visas for foreigners and monetary limitations on the right to family reunification, which will affect even the British from 2024.
The Government estimates that it will prevent the annual settlement of 300,000 foreign nationals who had entered the country legally under the post-Brexit system.. The radical right of the Conservative Party and related media have responded positively to the new measures against legal migration, which reached a net peak of 745,000 in 2022.