Read me my Rights

Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers – really? The muscular version

Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers – really?

In this revised version I make unequivocal allegations of dishonesty against the Government including the civil servants who drafted the Rwanda Evidence paper. I have done so to increase the newsworthyness of the piece. I know that this opens me up to allegations of sensationalising my argument at the expense of objectivity or balance. I am clear in my own mind, however, that I am correct. Tell it like it is.

RWANDA IS A SAFE COUNTRY FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS – REALLY?

Introduction

Much of the heated political debate about the Rwanda asylum scheme is missing (or conveniently ignores) a fundamental point. The whole scheme is based on a whopping lie. At all three stages of the court proceedings about the legality of the Rwandan asylum scheme the UK Government doggedly argued in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary that Rwanda is a safe country for asylum seekers. In their judgement of 15 November 2023 the Supreme Court emphatically held that it is not. The Government’s rapid response to this ruling is simply untrue. It claims that Rwanda has become a safe country in the eighteen months which have elapsed since the court proceedings began. This position is explained in some detail in a Home Office policy statement called “Evidence of the Safety of Rwanda” dated 12 December 2023.

We have become accustomed to Ministerial lies. A troubling feature of this one is that it is to be given the full force of law in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill currently being rushed through Parliament. Clause 2(1) of the Bill says “Every decision-maker must conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country.” This provision brazenly cancels important findings of fact made by the highest court in the land.

Another troubling feature is the extent to which civil servants are complicit in this deceit. Presumably the Home Secretary authorised the Evidence paper. The officials who authored it (whoever they may be) are responsible though not accountable for the falsehoods which it contains.

Before looking in some detail and the content of the Evidence document there are two preliminary points worth making. First, in the Supreme Court the evidence against the Government’s case was overwhelming and the Court’s reasons for holding that Rwanda is unsafe are wide reaching and compelling. Second, the Supreme Court findings of fact are a judicial determination by an impartial court. The court based these findings on detailed reliable evidence from a United Nations agency (UNHCR) which has enormous experience of operating in Rwanda (with hundreds of staff on the ground) over a period of 30 years. The court observed that the Government was unable to offer any reliable contradictory evidence. Now it has adopted the role of judge in its own cause by pronouncing that Rwanda has become a safe country. The Government has made no attempt to put forward any independent evidence in support of its extravagant claim. Unsurprisingly they have not sought the opinion of the UNHCR. That body has published its own rebuttal of the Government’s claim – “As of January 2024, UNHCR has not observed changes in the practice of asylum adjudication that would overcome the concerns set out in its 2022 analysis and in the detailed evidence presented to the Supreme Court.”

Timing

Time is of the essence for the Government who continue to insist that a lawful scheme, with planes in the air, will be up and flying by spring of this year. In his foreword to the Evidence paper the Home Secretary Mr Cleverly declares in the present tense that Rwanda is already a safe country for asylum seekers and that all the Supreme Court’s reasons for holding that Rwanda is unsafe have been resolved.

But hold on a minute. The new treaty with Rwanda dated 12 December 2023, a key change which supposedly converts Rwanda to a safe destination, has yet to be ratified. Likewise, we are

told, the new Rwandan legislation which is required to implement the necessary changes will take several months to enact. By its own admission the Government is misleading the public by making headline claims that Rwanda is already safe. They are so contemptuous of the truth that their own Evidence paper contains the information which reveals, on timing and on other points, that the basic contention is untrue. As we will see there are good reasons to doubt that Rwanda will ever be safe for asylum seekers.

We can now turn to examine the Supreme Court’s reasons for concluding that Rwanda is unsafe and the Government’s claim that these problems have been overcome.

Rwanda’s Human Rights Record

The Supreme Court rejected the Government’s submissions that Rwandan human rights abuses, including the genocide of 1994, are irrelevant to the question of whether Rwanda is a safe country for refugees. The court held that Rwanda’s poor record on human rights was the first of three reasons for holding that Rwanda is unsafe. It summarised its findings on this as follows –

“ Rwanda has a poor human rights record. In 2021, the UK government criticised Rwanda for “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”. UK government officials have also raised concerns about constraints on media and political freedom.”

There is nothing in the Evidence Paper which points to any material changes or developments in the last 18 months which could alter the Court’s assessment on this.

Structural Defects in the Rwandan Scheme

This is the most significant and enduring reason given by the Supreme Court for its finding that the scheme is unlawful. It summarised the position as follows –

“UNHCR’s evidence is that there are serious and systematic defects in Rwanda’s procedures and institutions for processing asylum claims.”

The UNHCR evidence on this was detailed and damning. The Government offered nothing in court to contradict it. But now, according to the Evidence paper, all these failings and shortcomings have been resolved. It latches on to a comment made by the Supreme Court about the possibility that Rwanda may become a safe place for asylum seekers in future.

This needs to be seen in context. According to the UNHCR evidence (repeated in their most recent contribution) this would require “long-term capacity building.”

According to the Supreme Court – “……The necessary changes may not be straightforward, as they require an appreciation that the current approach is inadequate, a change of attitudes, and effective training and monitoring.

Clearly the problems are so deep-rooted as to be incapable of a quick fix of the sort which, according to the Home Secretary, has already been achieved. On this issue the Evidence Paper is nothing more than a catalogue of wishful thinking.

Rwandan Assurances – Past and Future

The new treaty with Rwanda is at the front and centre of the Government’s claim that Rwanda is

now safe for asylum seekers. The principal theme of the losing position in the courts was that Rwanda is a safe country because the Rwandan Government had provided formal assurances in the original 2022 Agreement with the UK that the British scheme would operate in a lawful manner. The Supreme Court, applying well established authorities, rejected this position. It pointed out that Rwanda had a track record of breaking undertakings of this kind in a now abandoned asylum scheme with Israel. There is no evidential justification for placing any reliance on the latest batch of Rwandan assurances.

No Minister

In a couple of places the Supreme Court lifts the veil of secrecy which normally enshrouds the work of civil servants. We see glimpses of a major difference in opinion on Rwanda between Foreign Office officials and their counterparts in the Home Office who are piloting the Rwanda scheme. At the stage when the original Rwandan scheme was being finalised in 2022 officials in the UK Foreign Office advised against prioritising Rwanda as a partner country. This was overridden by advice from Home Office officials “on the basis of desk-based research into the Rwandan asylum system, and on what they were told during two short visits to Rwanda in January and March 2022.”

The Evidence Paper contains nothing from the Foreign Office officials who reported human rights abuses in Rwanda in 2021 and who advised against the first Rwandan Asylum agreement weeks before it was concluded.

The Civil Service Code sets out core values including honesty, integrity and objectivity. The last of these means “basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence.” The

authors of the wretched Evidence paper were no doubt sketching out possible positions for Ministers to adopt. Those positions are almost certainly dishonest. Their failure to even acknowledge the glaring conflict with the UNHCR evidence on systemic failures betrays a complete lack of objectivity. When placed up against the Supreme Court findings of fact they cannot remotely be said to be based on a rigorous analysis of the evidence. The Code also states that civil servants “are expected at all times to respect the law.” The Evidence paper shows a profound disrespect for the findings of the Supreme Court. It is high time that we had an open debate in this country about the limits of how far civil servants should go in assisting the Government to promote dishonest schemes.