The Rwandan government told CNN that migrants will receive full board accommodation, health care and support for five years or until they are self-sufficient. This is a controversial scheme that the UK is promoting as an innovative approach to safe and legal asylum that will disrupt the dangerous business of human smugglers. But it has been condemned by dozens of refugee rights groups, international agencies, British leaders, the head of the Anglican Church and even Rwandan opposition politicians.
A week before the first arrivals, the workers were finishing the small wooden shed next to the hostel’s restaurant. “This will be a shop so they can buy everything they need here instead of going out,” said its managing director Ismael Bakina. Two covered areas in the gardens will serve as smoking areas, and a tent further away will double as an interview room and play area.
Prior to reception, there is an airport-style security check, including a luggage scanner and security with metal detectors. They are polite, professional and thorough. “As you can see, we are ready for migrants even today,” Bakina told CNN just hours before the first round of legal challenges against deportation began in the UK last week. Lawsuits against the policy have so far failed and the first flight from the UK to Rwanda is scheduled to take off on Tuesday.
Each time they arrive, two migrants will share each room, with shared bathrooms and laundry facilities on each floor. They will also have two red carpet prayer areas overlooking the Kigali hills, free Wi-Fi and computers to keep up with their legal affairs. Rwandan authorities point out the relative privilege that migrants will have here compared to being provided in British detention facilities.
“We want them to have safe, decent accommodation, and there is also a package that they will receive so that they can acquire skills, so that they can get any education, maybe start a business,” said Rwanda government spokesman Yolanda. Makolo in front of CNN.
The United Kingdom says it will pay Rwanda £ 120 million ($ 145 million) over the next five years to fund the program. On top of that, the United Kingdom also promised to pay the costs of processing and integration for each relocated person, covering the costs of legal advice, clerks, translators, accommodation, food and healthcare. According to a parliamentary briefing, the British government said it expected them to be similar to the cost of handling asylum in the UK, which is around £ 12,000 per person.
The United Kingdom has refused to disclose the cost of flights it will hire to transport deportees to Rwanda. The Home Office says in its latest annual report that it paid £ 8.6 million to lease 47 deportation flights carrying 883 people in 2020. Although the cost of individual flights varies by destination, the figures show that the interior ministry spent an average of £ 183,000 per flight or £ 9,700 per person.
With no limit on the number of migrants, thousands could pour into Kigali in the first five years of the plan.
The alleged security that Rwanda offers has been called into question by international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), which says the country “cannot be considered a safe third country for sending asylum seekers”.
HRW has been monitoring and investigating human rights conditions in Rwanda for decades and documenting abuses ranging from “suppression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture by the Rwandan authorities”.
The organization has accused Rwandan authorities of killing at least 12 refugees and arresting more than 60 in 2018 after police opened fire on a group of protesters protesting food rations. Rwanda’s National Human Rights Commission is investigating the incident, saying police “had to resort to force after all civilians failed”, but called the tragedy an isolated event.
The UK plan also drew criticism from the only opposition party vying for Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the last election, Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party, which says the country cannot afford it. “Rwanda is the most populous country in Africa. Do you think it will be easy for Rwanda to help these people?” Jean-Claude Ntesimana, the secretary general, told CNN.
Rwanda is almost one-tenth the size of the United Kingdom, but is home to nearly 13 million people, almost one-fifth of the United Kingdom’s population.
The Green Party accuses the United Kingdom of violating its international obligations by sending unwanted migrants 4,000 miles to Rwanda. “When it’s not the choice of refugees, it’s inhumane and illegal,” Ntesimana said.
The Rwandan government says it is perfectly legal.
“With this partnership, there is no breaking the law,” Makolo told CNN. “There is nothing in the Refugee Convention to prevent asylum seekers from being relocated to another safe country.”
Makolo admits that such a program does not work with Israel, and Rwanda abandoned it “very quickly.” But, she says, the deal with migrants in the UK is completely different and will succeed. In fact, she said, Rwanda could soon accept migrants from Denmark, with talks nearing completion.
Rwanda has recently partnered with the UN refugee agency to receive vulnerable asylum seekers evacuated from Libya. Just over 1,000 migrants have passed through the Gashora Emergency Transit Center in the three years of the program. Migrants stay on average between four and eight months before being resettled abroad, according to the center’s manager. Migrants have three choices: resettlement elsewhere, voluntary repatriation to their home country or local integration into Rwandan society. No one has chosen the last two, according to Fares Ruyumbu, the camp manager.
“You can’t compare it (Libya and Rwanda),” said Zemen Fesaha, a 26-year-old Eritrean refugee at the Gashora Transit Center. He spent four years in what he described as appalling conditions in Libya, while repeatedly but unsuccessfully trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. “It’s like going from hell to heaven.”
Although the 11 months he spent in Rwanda in the camp were safer and easier, he is determined to leave.
And Zemen is not alone in this. None of the refugees at the emergency center CNN spoke to wanted to stay in Rwanda.
Nyalada Gatluak Gianni, 26, from South Sudan, dreams of moving to Finland with her 1-and-a-half-year-old son. “What I want is not here, it is there,” she said.
Add Comment