{"id":215167,"date":"2022-06-20T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-20T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=215167"},"modified":"2022-06-15T03:51:48","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T02:51:48","slug":"uks-bid-to-export-some-refugees-to-rwanda-all-wrong-says-un-refugee-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/06\/uks-bid-to-export-some-refugees-to-rwanda-all-wrong-says-un-refugee-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"UK\u2019s Bid to Export Some Refugees to Rwanda, \u2018All Wrong\u2019, Says UN Refugee Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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13 Jun 2022 –\u00a0UN<\/a> High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi<\/a>, today dismissed the British government\u2019s proposal to process United Kingdom-bound asylum seekers in Rwanda, describing the offshore deal between the two countries announced in April, as \u201call wrong\u201d.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A boy walks through a migrant camp in Calais, northern France. Many asylum seekers attempt the sea crossing to England from the French coast. UNICEF\/Geai<\/p><\/div>\n

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The development comes as senior judges in the UK ruled that the Government’s first flight taking asylum seekers to the African nation, could go ahead.<\/p>\n

A High Court judge refused a temporary injunction on Friday to halt the first flight, due to take place on Tuesday, and on Monday, according to news reports, the Court of Appeal upheld that decision.<\/p>\n

A full legal hearing on the controversial policy is reportedly due to take place next month.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Rwanda, I think we\u2019ve been so clear over the last few weeks that we believe that this is all wrong, for so many different reasons<\/strong>,\u201d UNHCR<\/a> chief Mr. Grandi continued.<\/p>\n

International convention<\/h2>\n

Underscoring that the UK is a signatory to the International Convention on Refugees<\/a>, the High Commissioner maintained that trying to \u201cexport\u201d the responsibilities that this entailed, \u201cruns contrary to any notion of responsibility and international responsibility-sharing\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rwanda had a strong history in welcoming and processing tens of thousands of Congolese and Burundian refugees in the past, Mr. Grandi continued, insisting that the country did not have the capacity or infrastructure to carry out the refugee status assessments that were required on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

Irresponsible<\/h2>\n

\u201cIf it were the other way around, maybe we could discuss, but here, we are talking about a country (the UK) with structures that is exporting its responsibility to another country, Rwanda<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking in Geneva, the High Commissioner also dismissed the UK Government\u2019s assertion that the policy\u2019s aim was \u201cto save people\u201d from dangerous boat journeys across the English Channel, from the coast of mainland Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, saving people from dangerous journeys is great, is absolutely great,\u201d Mr. Grandi said, \u201cbut is that the right way to do it? Is that the real motivation for this deal to happen? I don\u2019t think so<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urging greater communication between the UK and French governments on the issue, since the majority of refugees likely to be impacted came via France, the High Commissioner noted that France also had the structures in place, to help asylum-seekers.<\/p>\n

When the policy was announced, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that<\/a> the $160 million scheme would \u201csave countless lives\u201d of migrants who often put themselves in the hands of illegal people traffickers.<\/p>\n

Legal avenues<\/h2>\n

Mr. Grandi conceded that although the situation was complicated, many legal avenues nonetheless exist for refugees and asylum-seekers to join family members already in the UK and EU countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this needs to be looked at bilaterally between the UK and respective EU countries<\/strong>; we have made ourselves available many times to provide advice; that\u2019s the way to do it,\u201d Mr. Grandi said.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – news.un.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Jun 2022 –\u00a0UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, today dismissed the British government\u2019s proposal to process United Kingdom-bound asylum seekers in Rwanda, describing the offshore deal between the two countries announced in April, as \u201call wrong\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":215168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[237,433,883,821,1412,639,2615,124],"class_list":["post-215167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-africa","tag-europe","tag-migrants","tag-refugees","tag-rwanda","tag-uk","tag-un-refugee-convention","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}