The British Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the transfer to Rwanda of asylum seekers whom the United Kingdom want removed from their territory as part of the country’s effort to deal with the migration crisis that it has grappled with for years. Rwanda last year agreed to host migrants to be relocated from the United Kingdom, under the Rwanda-UK Migration and Economic Development Partnership initiative. At the time, the Government of Rwanda made it clear that with this gesture, the country was offering part of a solution to the broken global migration system, and nothing else. As part of the plan, migrants would be integrated into communities across the country, where they would be entitled to full protection under Rwandan law, offered equal access to employment, and enrolment in healthcare and social care services, among other benefits. The ruling by the UK court on Wednesday did nothing but vilify Rwanda, a country that was only trying to offer a solution with the little it has, and driven by nothing but her own turbulent past. According to the ruling, “Rwanda is not a safe country” where these asylum seekers can be resettled and enjoy their full freedoms. The judges particularly said that there were no guarantees that these people would not be taken back to their own country from where they fled. The latest ruling did not come as a surprise because, since the agreement was signed between the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the then UK Secretary for Home Affairs in April last year, Rwanda has faced a barrage of accusations, with some even saying that the country did this for economic gain. While the UK government has announced it is working on a ‘Plan B’ that could see the asylum seekers eventually sent to Rwanda, it must be understood that Rwanda made this offer as a solution to this global challenge. This is not the first time the country has shown compassion to a suffering people. In 2019, Rwanda offered to take in thousands of asylum seekers who were stuck in Libya where they were being sold as slaves. Since then hundreds of them have been brought here, and many of them were processed to relocate to third countries mainly in Europe and North America. As of today, more of these people are still coming and hosted in their designated facility in Bugesera District, where they live freely and some have even chosen to stay in Rwanda over relocation to third countries. In fact, on Thursday, November 16, another group of 160 was received at Kigali International Airport from Libya.
