PM Starmer, abandoned the plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda. The scheme faced legal challenges and was deemed ineffective. Britain’s new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, announced on Saturday that he would cancel a plan to fly thousands of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda. This plan, originally introduced by the Conservative government in 2022, aimed to stop asylum seekers from arriving on small boats by sending them to the East African nation. However, the plan faced extensive legal challenges, preventing any asylum seekers from being sent to Rwanda.

In his first press conference as prime minister, Starmer explained that the Rwanda policy would be abandoned because it would have only affected about 1% of asylum seekers and failed to serve as an effective deterrent. He stated, “The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent. I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks that don’t act as a deterrent.”

The UK Supreme Court had declared the policy unlawful in November 2023, citing concerns that Rwanda could not be considered a safe third country. This led to the UK government signing a new treaty with Rwanda and passing new legislation to override the court’s decision. However, the legality of these actions was being challenged by charities and unions in the courts.

The British government had already invested hundreds of millions of pounds in Rwanda to set up accommodation and hire additional officials to process asylum seekers, funds that cannot be recovered. On July 8, Rwanda responded to the UK’s intention to end the Migration and Economic Development Partnership Agreement, stating it was “a problem of the UK, not Rwanda.”

Sonya Sceats, CEO of Freedom from Torture, one of the many organizations and charities that have campaigned to stop the Rwanda plan, welcomed Starmer’s announcement on Saturday. “We applaud Keir Starmer for moving immediately to close the door on this shameful scheme that played politics with the lives of people fleeing torture and persecution,” she said.

Earlier in the day, Agnes Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, had called on the new Labour government to follow through on its campaign promise to scrap the Rwanda pact.

“Our asylum system must be made to focus on delivering as fairly and efficiently as possible the security and certainty to which every refugee is entitled, however they may arrive,” Callamard wrote in a social media post.

She added that this is “just as demanded by our international obligations, the rule of law, and basic respect for every human.”

BY BURAK BATUHAN KARAKUS

20 JUNE 2022/LONDON

While the British government was planning to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, we organised a travelling exhibition at the famous London landmarks to remind the public of the difficulties refugees face on World Refugee Day, on the 20th of June.

While the decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was an extensive discussion in the British Parliament, on the occasion of World Refugee Day, on the 20th of June, we organised an exhibition known as the ‘Exhibition in Exile’ of cartoons drawn by world-renowned artists to draw attention to refugee problems. It was a travelling exhibition at famous London landmarks to remind the public of the difficulties refugees face.

The exhibition hosted a selection of the 120 best cartoons selected initially from among 1,200 submissions to a global cartoon contest organised by KYM (Kimse Yok Mu) in 2016. In addition to these cartoons, the cartoon was carried by 25 volunteers, most of whom were also refugees, with successful refugee stories to raise awareness. We moved the cartoon through the British Parliament, Parliament Square, Victoria Tower Garden, and Westminster Bridge.

One of the cartoons in the exhibition was by Oleksiy Kustovski that describes how refugees travel thousands of miles alone, carrying their whole lives in a small suitcase. It is sometimes a mother and child, sometimes an unaccompanied child or family, who are fleeing to safety from the dangers of their birth country.

Xavier Bonilla drew the lives lost at sea while fleeing to safety. People are desperately getting into the dangerous waters despite not knowing how to swim, and sometimes the weather conditions or pushbacks don’t let them continue their journey. Only a small number of people survive in a sinking dinghy.

When we told the people who viewed the exhibition what difficulties a refugee went through, we immediately met with their support and their interest became an absolute source of motivation for our new projects.