Analysing the UK-Rwanda Agreement on Asylum Partnership

In December 2023, Theodore Konstadinides, Professor at the University of Essex and Co-Director of CAJI, was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee on the topic of the UK Rwanda Agreement on Asylum Partnership. This was also followed up by the provision of written evidence submitted jointly by Theodore and Rebecca Amor, one of the PhD researchers here at the University of Essex, cited by the House of Lords International Agreements Committee in their Scrutiny of International Agreements Report.

The written evidence argues that the government’s asylum policy in Rwanda is not fit for purpose for several reasons.

Although presented as a policy that will stop the boats what it does is relocate the problem by moving some asylum seekers to Rwanda an unsafe country that has failed to protect in the past individuals from refoulment and has a dark record in terms of the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession. Indeed the renewed treaty with Rwanda laid before Parliament is a positive step to inject some reassurances into the policy to guarantee that asylum seekers will remain there or will be sent back to the UK in certain circumstances. However, writing it down cannot guarantee what will happen once the first group of asylum seekers are sent to Rwanda. What is more, trying to complement the policy with additional legislation at home that Rwanda is safe is equivalent to legislating a legal fiction. The government knows this, hence it has tried to bulletproof this policy from challenges, with some very little window for exceptions, directing decision-makers and courts to deem Rwanda to be safe when this is not the case.

The government is determined to move forward with this plan despite the red flags raised by the Supreme Court back in November 2023 and the House of Lords International Agreements Committee findings in January 2024. Hence, once more after Brexit, the Rwanda case vividly illustrates that foreign affairs can often produce domestic questions of an important constitutional nature. This is not merely about due diligence (i.e. whether the UK should have signed a treaty with Rwanda, a currently unsafe country), but it also concerns the protection of the rights of individuals who arrive in the UK seeking asylum and the available avenues for redress in case they are wronged by the system, the separation of powers and the rise of the executive to the expense of Parliament and the judiciary, and the UK’s adherence to its international obligations and growing track record of threatening to ignore them.