The UK government is considering to start deporting a group of asylums-seekers to Rwanda in the “next few months”, an official source confirmed Monday following the working visit of the UK Home Secretary, Suella Braverman to Kigali last weekend.
Rwandan officials said there will be no camps, nor prisons, nor detention centers for the asylum seekers.
“We will have housing for them in Kigali and also in our secondary cities. They’ll be helped to integrate into the community with government support,” the Rwandan Government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo was quoted by local media as saying.
According to Makolo, this will be done over a number of years hoping that they will then be integrated enough to be self-sufficient and be able to carry on [with] their lives here because it’s a multi-year partnership.
“The migrants will also have access to education and training to help them build a career or start a business,” she said without elaborating when the first batch of migrants will arrive in Rwanda.
Rwanda and the UK inked the “Migration and Economic Development Partnership” in April 2022, to allow migrants and asylum seekers who are illegally in the UK to be transferred to Rwanda.
The Migration and Economic Development Partnership concerns all the migrants and asylum seekers who arrived in the UK illegally from January 1, 2022. More than 45,000 people arrived in Britain by boat in 2022, compared with 8,500 in 2020, according to official statistics.
The UK government previously said “anyone entering the UK illegally” after 1 January 2022 could be sent, with no limit on numbers.
Rwanda says it can process 1,000 asylum seekers during the trial period, but has capacity for more.
Under the deal, Rwanda can also ask the UK to take in some of its most vulnerable refugees.
However, no asylum seeker has actually been sent to the country. The first flight was scheduled to go in June, but was cancelled after legal challenges.
CU/abj/APA