The UK parliament has finally passed a\u00a0contentious\u00a0bill that will allow the government to send asylum seekers\u00a0to\u00a0Rwanda\u00a0for their claims to be considered by the East African nation. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u2019s efforts had been stuck between opposition in\u00a0the Houses of Parliament and\u00a0challenges in\u00a0the British courts, as lawmakers and activists have sought to scupper the legislation on human rights grounds. <\/p>\n
Sunak\u2019s inability to\u00a0implement the policy\u00a0has caused considerable embarrassment, as the British government has sent\u00a0millions\u00a0of pounds to Rwanda to fund a scheme which to date has failed to deliver any results. <\/p>\n
It\u00a0is designed to deter irregular migration into the\u00a0United Kingdom, particularly people\u00a0traveling\u00a0on illegal \u2013 and dangerous \u2013 small boats from France, arranged by criminal gangs. <\/p>\n
In theory, the legislation will see some landing in the UK sent to Rwanda where their asylum claim will be considered. If their claim is accepted, they will stay in Rwanda. If it is declined, the bill says they cannot be deported by Rwanda to anywhere other than the UK, though it is unclear what would ultimately happen in this scenario. <\/p>\n
Two years after the scheme was first conceived, the absence of any deportations so far\u00a0has been considered a major failure for Sunak, who has previously\u00a0marked out\u00a0stopping small boats as a key priority. <\/p>\n
The Supreme Court of the UK ruled last year that the policy is unlawful \u201cbecause there are substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers would face a real risk of ill-treatment by reason of refoulement to their country of origin if they were removed to Rwanda.\u201d <\/p>\n
Refoulement is the practice where asylum seekers or refugees are forcibly returned to a place where they would face persecution or danger, against important principles of international human rights law. <\/p>\n
The judges also found that Rwanda\u2019s asylum system, its poor human rights record, and its previous failure to comply with non-refoulement agreements meant that the British government could not be sure asylum seekers would have their claims considered safely and properly. <\/p>\n
They also noted that, as recently as 2021, the UK government criticized Rwanda for \u201cextrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture.\u201d <\/p>\n
The government responded by introducing the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill in January of this year, which effectively enshrines in UK law that Rwanda is a safe country, overriding the judges\u2019 concerns. <\/p>\n
Home Secretary James Cleverly said in a video posted on X on Monday that \u201cthe Safety of Rwanda Bill has passed in Parliament and it will become law within days.\u201d <\/p>\n
He added that the act would \u201cprevent people from abusing the law by using false human rights claims to block removals. And it makes clear that the UK Parliament is sovereign, giving the government the power to reject interim blocking measures imposed by European courts,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Even with the bill passed, it is possible that the government will face legal challenges in the European Court of Human Rights, as the UK is still a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights. The European court has previously\u00a0barred\u00a0it\u00a0from\u00a0sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.\u00a0<\/em> <\/p>\n The bill has suffered long delays because of attempts to amend it. A process colloquially known as \u201cping pong,\u201d where the two parts of the UK\u2019s parliament\u00a0\u2013\u00a0the House of Commons and the House of Lords\u00a0\u2013\u00a0send legislation back and forth, has been going on for months. Every time the House of Lords makes amendments to the bill, the House of Commons, where Sunak has a majority, must vote to remove them. <\/p>\n The bill\u2019s passage\u00a0is not necessarily a major political win for Sunak. Even if the policy stopped all the small boat crossings Sunak says he wants to prevent, it would still barely touch the sides in terms of the UK\u2019s net migration figures. In 2022, the number of people arriving by small boats was 45,744, according to Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. Net migration the same year, according to government figures, was 745,000. <\/p>\n This is a problem for Sunak and his governing Conservative Party, as they are set to face the public in a general election\u00a0that\u00a0must be called\u00a0before the end of this year. Parties on the right\u00a0\u2013\u00a0most notably Reform UK, the new political home of arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage\u00a0\u2013\u00a0will push the issue of illegal migration as hard as possible. <\/p>\n There is also a danger that Sunak gets dragged into a wider debate around the UK leaving the ECHR, should deportations be blocked by the European court after the bill passes.\u00a0This issue has already caused deep divisions between different sections of the Conservative Party. <\/p>\n To date, the\u00a0Rwanda\u00a0policy has cost the British government \u00a3220m\u00a0($274m), and that figure could rise to \u00a3600m after the first 300 people have been sent\u00a0to East Africa. That leaves Sunak open to criticism from both the left and the right,\u00a0who can say not only that the policy violates international human rights law, but that it is expensive and ineffective. <\/p>\n The opposition Labour Party, currently expected to win at the next general election, has already said that\u00a0it\u00a0will scrap the policy should\u00a0it\u00a0come to power. <\/p>\n\n The UK parliament has finally passed a\u00a0contentious\u00a0bill that will allow the government to send asylum seekers\u00a0to\u00a0Rwanda\u00a0for their claims to be considered by the East African nation. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak\u2019s efforts had been stuck between opposition in\u00a0the Houses of Parliament and\u00a0challenges in\u00a0the British courts, as lawmakers and activists have sought to scupper the legislation on <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":18268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}