Why are critics to UK Rwanda asylum deal not proposing solutions?

A lot of criticism continues to be directed to the UK-Rwanda asylum seekers’ deal signed by both countries in April 2022. The UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership intends to lower the global migration crisis and weaken the organized crime gangs promoting trips to the UK by dangerous and unlawful routes mostly through the English Channel.

Inspired by how Rwanda handled the Libyan, Israeli and Afghanistan cases, the UK government approached Rwanda and proposed the deal. Yes, it is the UK that approached Rwanda. It is very important to understand how the UK partnership with Rwanda came about.

Owing to the lessons learnt by many Rwandans who lived in exile for decades, the Rwandan government approved the request to tackle the migration crisis.

The UK has, for many years, faced a big problem of people smugglers. It is sad to see, in this era, human beings being smuggled and sold like mere commodities. The problem has simply worsened every year. The price to cross the Channel varies, according to the network of smugglers, between $3,380 and $8,000. Reports indicate that people smugglers collect up to $432,000 per boat that makes it across the English Channel, a narrow waterway between Britain and France.

In 2021, a total of 28,526 crossed the Channel, up from 8,404 in 2020. In August 2022, more than 22,560 people journeyed across the Channel. The number is expected to rise to 60,000 at end of 2022. Regardless of how costly, and risky it is to cross the Channel, asylum seekers keep inflowing into UK hoping to get jobs and government financial assistance. Due to the big number of people crossing, some don’t get what they hoped for. They turn into criminals, beggars, domestic slaves, while others become victims of sexual and labor exploitation.

Humanity and compassion are what drive Rwanda’s decision.  Rwanda, one of the safest countries in the world, accepting to accommodate the asylum seekers from the UK is an answer to stopping the smugglers who con people and make them risk their lives crossing the Channel.  Rwanda is always ready and willing to help any other country in need. In Rwanda, the assylum seekers or migrants are entitled to full protection under Rwandan law, equal access to employment, and enrolment in healthcare and social care services.

Some in the international media, academics and rights groups blindly characterized the UK-Rwanda partnership as echoing and troubling colonial practice of moving people across continents without their consent. These critics are either not well-informed at all, or just heartless spoilers with ulterior hidden agendas.

In April, in an open letter that described the scheme as "shamefully cruel", more than 100 charities and campaign groups, including the UK network of non-governmental organisations Bond, called on the government to scrap the plans. One would wish to see the deal’s critics actually proposing or providing real working solutions to this migration crisis. But they never do that; not because they don’t want to, but because they have no sound solutions to offer anyway.

Instead of their constant hate and misinformation, especially on the part of Rwanda, a resilient nation that many never thought would stand tall after the devastating impact of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, they should have presented well-informed ways of dealing with present challenges. They should propose to the world the innovative way of handling the blocked system of the migration crisis. But all they do is criticize the solutions being put in place while some of the critics are actually collecting huge sums of money from the smugglers and from migrants.  

What Rwanda is doing with the UK is specifically about dealing with people being bought and sold across borders. Rwanda is helping these abandoned people to have a peaceful safe life, and dignity. Rwanda is doing its part in finding a solution.

Surprisingly, imposter human rights advocates such as Amnesty International and corrupt journalists and charities point fingers to the relocation of asylum seekers from UK to Rwanda, saying it is cruel. How come they said nothing about the migrants evacuated from Libya to Rwanda? Is there anything particularly special about the UK asylum seekers?

The critics of the deal, especially imposter human rights advocates and corrupt journalists, pretend to pity the people being smuggled but actually they are advocating for their own pockets.

Safety in Rwanda is no longer a debatable topic because the asylum seekers evacuated from Libya and Israel are the best witness of how safe and peaceful they are in Rwanda.

Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, charity organizations, a number of lawyers and UK homeowners are filling their own pockets while pretending to care for the refugees. The latter include the UK-based Care4Calais, which claims to have teams of specially trained volunteers who help vulnerable asylum seekers organise what they need to begin the asylum-seeking process.

There are critics such as Belgian Professor of law and politics Filip Reyntjens – he worked for the Rwandan genocidal regime of Juvenal Habyarimana and was the architect of the divisive and discriminative December 1978 Rwandan constitution – with a political agenda against Rwanda and vendetta. These ones will always oppose anything positive about Rwanda.