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Britain Persists with Rwanda Plan for Migrants
21/02/2023. London, United Kingdom. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly meets Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic Rastislav Káčer for a bilateral meeting in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. Picture by Joe Leates / No 10 Downing Street
December 04, 2023 7:21 AM
VOA News
Britain is continuing its efforts to have migrants seeking asylum in Britain sent instead to Rwanda to seek asylum there.
In the latest version, Britain would have British lawyers stationed in Rwandan courts to alleviate British concerns about the workings of the system in Rwanda.
Britain’s Supreme Court has already ruled that an earlier government plan to send asylum seekers to the East African country is illegal.
But that has not stopped some politicians from trying to devise a new way to implement the Rwanda plan.
Reports say Home Secretary James Cleverly is to fly to Rwanda this week to sign an agreement that would pay Rwanda an additional 15 million euros to expand its asylum processing capacity, according to a Sunday Times report.
Rwanda has already received 140 million euros from Britain for the asylum plan that was set to go into effect in 2020 but was blocked by legal challenges just days before it was to start.
In November, the Supreme Court stopped the plan again because of human rights concerns and noted there was no guarantee that Rwanda would not return the asylum seekers to their home countries, which would place the migrants at risk.
After last month’s ruling, the British government persisted with its Rwandan plan and said they would strive to sign a formal treaty with the African nation.
Britain has experienced an ever-increasing number of migrants arriving to its border in recent years, as have other European countries.
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