This week, the British Parliament voted to declare Rwanda a safe country. Safe enough at least to send the unwanted stranger. Without being able to claim existing legislation or having certain human rights apply to him. Without chance of appeal. The first flights to Rwanda should depart within ten to twelve weeks.
So much for the compassion of a country that in 1951 was one of the original 28 – largely European – signatories to the UN Refugee Convention. Intended to give people who are persecuted and therefore flee the right to request shelter elsewhere. Not the right to asylum, but the right to ask for it.
Those who turn to the United Kingdom now run the risk of not being able to build a new life there, but in Rwanda. The idea is that that prospect should deter them enough to refrain from a dangerous crossing of the Channel. This is being followed with great interest by politicians in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Apparently outsourcing asylum seekers is more attractive than getting your own procedure, reception or deportation of safe landers in order.
It is clear that there is a problem with smugglers who profit from desperation, and yes also with the economic dreams of others. Just as crossing the Channel – and that of the Mediterranean – is dangerous. Less than four hours after the Rwanda law was passed, another boat sank off the coast of France with probably 112 people on board. Five people, including a seven-year-old child, were killed. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saw their deaths as “a reminder of why my plan is important.”
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The domestic message of his Rwanda plan is clear: citizens, we are doing everything we can to reduce the number of boats. But the justified concerns that citizens have about the arrival of refugees – they see their neighborhoods change or look for housing in vain – are not addressed by the Rwanda deal. Doesn’t support for refugees disappear if it turns out that this deal is little more than symbolic politics?
Of the 52,000 asylum seekers in the United Kingdom whose procedures are still ongoing, only a fraction arrived by boat. Sixty percent of boat refugees have so far been granted asylum because they came from war zones, it is estimated that only 1 percent can be sent to Rwanda.
The big question is whether the deal will be able to prevent such dangerous journeys. The British Home Office concluded in 2020 that most asylum seekers have “little or no knowledge of the asylum policy of the country of destination.” Moving the British border to French territory so that the asylum procedure began there also had little effect at the beginning of this century on the number of people crossing the Channel by boat. Nor do fences or inhumane tent camps appear to have any effect on the number of asylum seekers elsewhere in Europe.
What all these measures do is destroy European decency. Refugees have the right to protection, not only if they come from a neighboring war zone. Speeding up asylum procedures and creating support for them would be a real deal.
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