Stopped boats?

Why in the UK adopted a law on the expulsion of migrants to Rwanda

After two years of fighting their own parliament and the Supreme Court, the conservatives nevertheless achieved their own-the Rwanda Bill law was officially adopted. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke with the words that aircraft with illegal migrants would go to the African country in the next two months. “No“ if ”, no“ but, ”he said.

Human rights activists, courts and opposition constantly criticized the bill, but the conservative party still pushed it. The fate of the elections that future this year depends on the success of the initiative: the Labor by polls is still ahead of the current government. Whether this bet will pay off in the material of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Crossing the La Channel

In the morning of Tuesday, another boat with illegal migrants went to England from France to England. A small ship with 112 people sailed only a few hundred meters from the shore when the motor stalled. Several people fell into the water, many were unconscious on board. Five could not be saved, among them was a little girl.

Just a few hours before, Sunak announced at the time of the press conference: illegal refugees from the United Kingdom will be sent to Rwanda. The prime minister stood against the background of the slogan "Stop the boats." They have been accompanied by the bill since 2022, when the predecessor of Sunaka Boris Johnson first spoke about him as a possible solution to the problem of illegal migration. “People should know that if they try to come here illegally, they will not be able to stay; They will be returned either to their country or to Rwanda, ” says Sunak.

How the Ruanda law is related to the exit from the EU

The history of the Ruanda law has been counting since March 2021. The then Prime Minister of Great Britain Boris Johnson closed the country after Brexit and wanted to “regain control of the borders” with the help of a new immigration reform . A year later, on April 14, 2022, Johnson said that the United Kingdom agreed with Rwanda that he would send applicants to the shelters of the arrived illegally. “The illegitimate child of Brexit,” the senior researcher at the Research Institute Jill Ratter called this reform in a conversation with The New York Times.

As planned by the authors, migrants who illegally arrived on boats in anticipation of a decision on the shelter will go to Rwanda, where they will be defended. Even if the refugee still receives legal status, he will not be returned to the UK. If you follow the law, it should be relocated from the center of refugees to housing in Rwanda. The migrant will not be connected with Great Britain.

According to the Migration Observatory of Oxford University, in 2022 the number of people who arrived in small boats amounted to 45,744 people. Pure migration in the same year, according to the government, amounted to 745,000 people. In 2023, the number of migrants arrived on boats decreased slightly - to 36 thousand people. These data served as fuel for conservatives and their voters throughout all two years of struggle. The Minister of Internal Affairs James Cleverly called the signing of the Law “Signed Point” and stated that the UK plans to reject all possible decisions blocking the law from the European Court of Human Rights.

Can London afford to ignore the solutions of the ECHR is difficult to say. So, in June 2022, when Johnson tried to launch the first aircraft with migrants in Rwanda (130 people were supposed to be in it, but only 10 of them were placed due to litigation), the ECHR ordered him to stop it a few hours before the flight. Since Sunak did not sell the law in parliament, this has not been repeated.

More than 250 British human rights organizations wrote a letter to Sunaka, promising to challenge measures in European and British courts. Denis Delich, Director for Protecting the Interests of the International Rescue Committee for the Rescue of Great Britain, told The Guardian that “sending refugees to Rwanda is an ineffective, unjustifiably cruel and expensive approach” to the problem. According to her, the state should abandon this plan and focus on creating a "more humane and ordered immigration system within the country."

Human rights activists also often reproached the British authorities in violation of the UN Convention on refugee rights, according to which applicants should be protected by the country in which they want to stay and cannot be sent to their dangerous places.

Moreover, in November 2023, the UK Supreme Court ruled that Rwanda cannot be considered a safe country to wait for asylum. Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party did not agree with this decision: already in December the government introduced a whole emergency law on Rwanda's security. The Supreme Court is not capable of canceling his Supreme Court.

In an attempt to avoid reputation losses, the state air carrier Rwanda refused to provide his aircraft to expel migrants. And this despite the fact that the state itself is “proud” by the participation of the British conservatives in the Law.

Is it safe to wait for a decision on the guns in Rwanda?

After the notorious famous genocide in Rwand, throughout the 21st century, one president - Paul Kagama (since 2000) rules. With him, the country is actively developing, GDP per capita flew 4 times. So the journalist The New York Times describes the capital of the country, Declan Walsh, who had been there for the 30th anniversary of the genocide: “After thirty years Kigali, is the subject of envy of all of Africa. Small streets curl past sparkling towers, in which there are banks, luxurious hotels and technological startups. There is a Volkswagen automobile plant and the production of MRNC-vaccines. The largest basketball league and concerts of such stars as American rapper Kendrick Lamar, who performed here in December, take place in the arena for 10,000 seats. ” However, in the next paragraph, Walsh talks about the tough methods by which the President of the country of Paul Kagama has achieved this success.

Human rights organizations actively criticize the government of the country for the arrests of opposition. Moreover, the authorities do not stop in the struggle with those who criticize the regime abroad. Human Rights Watch writes in his report that “the repressions against the Rwanders living abroad vary from murders, abductions, beatings and violent disappearance to manipulated requests for extradition, arbitrary detentions and attempts or successful issues.”

Rwanda already had scandals with the relocation of refugees. After the residents of neighboring Burundi fled to the country, the Kagam government threatened to send them to the third countries. In Rwanda, the rights of the LGBT community are violated , asylum petitions under this article do not receive it.

Sunak promises to send the first planes from Britain to Rwanda in June-July. By the end of the year, London should spend 370 million pounds on the implementation of the law, 50 million of which went to Rwanda immediately after signing the document. Already, the initiative cost the authorities 220 million, although not a single refugee has yet gone home. For each migrant sent, Great Britain pledged to pay Rwanda an additional 20,000 pounds as a net fee, plus 150,874 pounds for operating expenses.

Labor in opposition promise to cancel the law after coming to power.

“Sunak's scheme costs more than £ 500 million and is needed in order to send only 300 people - less than 1% of asylum petitioners. There is no plan for the remaining 99%. Tori policy is just an extortion election trick ",

- So the situation is described by a member of the Labor Party and the shadow Minister of the Interior Ivett Cooper. The parliamentary elections in the UK will take place at the end of 2024: now, according to polls, the Labor Party is located ahead of almost a two-time margin.

For Rishi Sunak and the entire conservative party, the success of the Ruanda law is extremely important. However, because of the debate, Sunak has already lost the ally, Minister of Immigration Robert Jenrik, who did not agree with the prime minister’s position. In addition, the latest surveys show that not everyone agrees in the criteria for the success of the law. According to sociologists from British Future, only a quarter of the respondents will consider such aircraft with migrants in Rwanda. Another 38% of respondents would like to reduce the number of arriving boats at least half. A quarter of a survey participants opposed the law, not seeing any successful result.

Between prison and expulsion

Great Britain is not the first to decide to send migrants to Rwanda. As early as 2021, Denmark tried to introduce the same practice, which had already introduced the policy of “zero refugees”. Last year, the local government signed a three -year pact with Rwanda and opened a refugee center in Kingali, but Copenhagen's plan met a flurry of criticism, so while he remained on paper.

The mood throughout the EU coincides with the decisions of the Governments of Great Britain and Denmark, since the countries of the European Union need “new decisions”, says the Minister of Immigration and Integration of Denmark Kaara Dybvad Bek. The Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni with might and main discusses the possibility of creating refugees camps in Albania. In February, local lawmakers ratified the Tirana agreement. Interest in a similar deal expressed the German chancellor Olaf Sholts. “The federal government will study the possibility of determining the status of refugee protection in transit or third countries in the future, in accordance with the Geneva Convention on refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights,” said Scholz in November 2023.

There are already successful examples of such initiatives in history. In 2013, Israel ran into a large influx of migrants from Sudan and Eritrea. For them, they created a center of detention, but a year later the Supreme Court decided to close it due to a violation of human rights. Then Tel Aviv gave refugees a choice: Israeli prison, deportation home with 3.5 thousand dollars, or expulsion to one of the third countries: for example, to Rwanda or Uganda.

According to the calculations of the Israeli authorities, either home or one of the countries of East Africa sent about 20 thousand people. Israeli politicians then claimed that such a tough approach was designed to “save life”, because refugees, seeing the inability to stay in Israel, supposedly would not want to risk their life and go through the dangerous path of the migrant. After 10 years, Rishi Sunak decided to be guided by the same approach.