Rose Jaji, Senior Researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

The externalization of borders, migration management, and asylum procedures by high-income countries is not new. Australia’s “Pacific Solution”, the EU’s partnerships on migration governance with countries in North and West Africa, the US’s externalization to Mexico and Central America, and the EU-Türkiye deal are illustrative examples. Against this backdrop, the recent UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership indicates the spread of this practice and its normalization. This article argues that the UK-Rwanda Partnership and similar arrangements imply that refugee hosting, especially by countries that ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, is optional and discretionary rather than obligatory. The article specifically addresses the plan to deport asylum-seekers, the commodification of asylum, and the implications of the Partnership for international refugee law. Notwithstanding the wording suggesting concern for asylum-seekers, the Partnership fundamentally serves the interests of the deporting and receiving governments to the exclusion of its long-term effects on the people who are deported, the host society, and humanitarian principles at large. The externalization of asylum has the overall impact of perpetuating the disproportionately high numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees in low- and middle-income countries, which creates a vicious circle considering that this is the very reason why asylum-seekers increasingly seek refuge in high-income countries instead of waiting for limited opportunities for third country resettlement.

Burden-sharing and Low- and Middle-income Countries

Armed conflicts and forced displacement predominantly occur in low and middle-income countries. For the majority of asylum-seekers, the first country of asylum is often a neighboring country unable to provide them with economic opportunities even if it welcomes them. As at mid-2023, there were 110 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide.[1] Of this number, 62.5 million are internally displaced, 36.4 million are refugees, 6.1 million are asylum-seekers, and 5.3 million are other people in need of international protection.[2] Nine out of ten or 75% of the world’s refugee population and other people in need of international protection live in low- and middle-income countries.[3] For instance, 96% of people who are forcibly displaced in Africa are hosted in neighboring countries on the continent.[4] Ethiopia, Sudan, and Uganda which were ranked in the top 10 refugee hosting countries in the world in 2023 are among countries with the lowest rankings on the Human Development Index.[5] Sudan incidentally descended into civil war in April 2023, which demonstrates that some of the major host countries in Africa are prone to conflict, fragility, and uncertainty.

Other low- and middle-income countries hosting large numbers of countries are Bangladesh, Iran, and Pakistan. This is coupled with a steady decline in donor funding for refugees in low- and middle-income countries that have traditionally hosted the majority of refugees, which exacerbates the plight of the refugees.[6] Hundreds of thousands of refugees in African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda have lived in refugee camps and settlements for decades without prospects for naturalization. Without sustained financial support from high-income countries and robust third country resettlement programs as part of burden-sharing, refugees in protracted situations are taking the initiative to find individual solutions that include “irregular” migration to countries they believe offer better economic prospects beyond providing security. Unemployment, poverty, hostility from citizens and governments, authoritarian rule and the absence of integration policies are some of the challenges that refugees face in some low- and middle-income host countries, which suggests that deporting asylum-seekers to such countries is unlikely to deter what high-income countries refer to as “illegal entry” into their territories.

The Asylum-Seeker and Economic Migrant Distinction

Despite the existence of literature challenging the distinction between asylum-seekers and economic migrants,[7] many governments and policy makers continue to use this distinction in their immigration and refugee policies and insist that asylum-seekers apply for refugee status in the first country of asylum. This distinction overlooks the fact that when people flee, they are escaping not only from violence and insecurity but also from untenable livelihoods that armed conflicts and individualized persecution engender. It is common knowledge that armed conflict disrupts livelihoods and the economy founders. The quest for security is not incongruous with the search for economic opportunities because insecurity does not mean that people who flee do not have aspirations beyond physical security. Some of the people who flee violent conflicts are professionals seeking to reestablish economic independence and self-sufficiency — something which is not always feasible in refugee camps located mostly in economically marginalized regions of the host country. The distinction between asylum-seekers and economic migrants is therefore tenuous.

The intertwinement of insecurity with disrupted livelihoods explains why many refugees persistently seek third country resettlement in countries that have the capacity to economically integrate and provide them with durable solutions through naturalization. The absence of durable solutions in many first countries of asylum and the limited opportunities for third country resettlement have led to some asylum-seekers and refugees taking the initiative to find durable solutions in third countries leading to what high-income countries predominantly depict as “illegal migration”. There is evidence showing that merely crossing an international border does not guarantee security as cases of refugees being hunted down in countries of first asylum by security agents from their countries of origin attest to.[8] There are also numerous cases of security forces in the host country subjecting refugees to physical abuse, arbitrary detention, and torture.[9] In such cases, asylum-seekers and refugees are compelled to seek protection further from the country of origin instead of waiting for the rare chance for third country resettlement. It is in this broader context that the UK and other high-income countries considering deportation partnerships with low- and middle-income countries need to understand the arrival of asylum-seekers on their territories.

The UK-Rwanda Partnership and International Refugee Law

The Introductory Note to the Refugee Convention states that the Convention “lays the basic minimum standards for the treatment of refugees”.[10] Many high-income countries appear reluctant to even admit asylum-seekers onto their territory. In contrast, many low- and middle-income countries that are often ranked at the bottom of development and human rights indices welcome disproportionately large numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees as noted above. The Refugee Convention enshrines three fundamental principles namely non-discrimination, non-penalization, and non-refoulement. It elaborates on these principles by stating that asylum-seekers are not to be penalized for breach of immigration rules, arbitrarily detained, and expelled (refoulement) or returned against their will to a territory where they fear their lives and freedom could be in danger.[11] In contrast to these principles, the Addendum to the Memorandum of Understanding (Addendum to the MoU) between the UK and Rwanda refers to the people who arrived on its territory without relevant travel documents as having engaged in “unauthorised immigration”, “unlawful cross border migration”, or “illegal entry”[12], regardless of whether or not they are asylum-seekers. Naturally, people who flee are unable to prove fear of persecution in their countries and obtain refugee status before they leave, which is the reason why the Refugee Convention protects them against expulsion or deportation on the grounds of “illegal entry”.

The Addendum to the MoU presents two objectives that suggest that the Partnership was motivated by the best interest of asylum-seekers. These objectives are “deterring dangerous and illegal journeys which are putting people’s lives at risk” (2.1.1) and “disrupting the business model of people smugglers who are exploiting vulnerable people” (2.1.2).[13] The Partnership is remarkably silent on the UK’s gains in initiating it and those of Rwanda in agreeing to it beyond the curious inclusion of “development” in the Partnership’s name. The Addendum assumes that asylum-seekers who use smugglers are hapless victims and not people with agency who weigh the pros and cons of the risks they take in their journeys. The idea that the Partnership is intended to make asylum-seekers safe by “deter[ring] dangerous onward travel”[14] overlooks the fact that asylum-seekers do not risk their lives because of people smugglers; the latter exist because their services are in demand. As long as many asylum-seekers are unable to travel through “regular” channels, it is highly unlikely that they will stop using the services of people smugglers whom they do not see as criminals but as people enabling them to reach their destinations in a network of ordinary people, state actors, and business people.[15] Routes out of war zones are fraught with danger and asylum-seekers do not necessarily view people smugglers as a danger but as facilitating mobility.

There is not much evidence so far showing that migration governance partnerships formed around externalization, for example, between the European Union and countries in North and West Africa, have succeeded in deterring migration to EU Member States as the intermittent flows and ebbs show. Similarly, a secret deal by the Israeli government with the governments of Rwanda and Uganda collapsed after protests in Israel forced the government to discontinue the deportations and the Rwandan and Ugandan governments reneged on the deal because of the damage that it caused to their reputation as they were seen as complicit in the Israeli government’s anti-African racism.[16] The UK-Rwanda Partnership document includes the UK Supreme Court ruling stating that the deportation of asylum-seekers to Rwanda was “unlawful”, [17] This ruling cites, among others, the deportations from Israel as having led to violation of asylum-seekers’ rights. Despite the perils of “irregular” migration and the exorbitant amounts that asylum-seekers pay to people smugglers, many high-income countries that are traditionally third countries of resettlement have come up with stringent visa regimes that disqualify many, leading to these people seeking alternative ways of travelling that include paying people smugglers for dangerous boat and cross-border truck voyages.

Part of objective 2.2 of the Addendum reads, “[…] commitments set out in this Addendum Arrangement are made by the United Kingdom to Rwanda and vice versa and do not create or confer any right on any individual, nor shall compliance with this Addendum Arrangement be justiciable in any court of law by third-parties or individuals”.[18] This means that asylum-seekers deported under the terms of the Partnership cannot take legal action against either or both governments. The UK is reneging on its commitments to international refugee law by offloading its responsibilities on Rwanda and leaving it to the latter to decide on the next course of action for asylum-seekers who cannot remain on its territory. Part 5.3.4 of the Addendum states, “for those Relocated Individuals who have no basis upon which to remain in Rwanda, [Rwanda will] only remove such a person to a country in which they have a right to reside”.[19] It is not clear what would happen to the relocated individuals if “the country in which they have the right to reside” is the country of origin they fled in the first place, which is often the case. The vagueness of the post-deportation scenario was captured by the Foreign Minister of Botswana when he revealed that Botswana had rejected a similar partnership because Botswana would not agree to “hosting people not knowing what the end game would be”.[20]

The deportation of asylum-seekers to a third country reinforces the idea of unequal mobility opportunities evident in asylum claims being understood in terms of those who are desirable and welcome and those who are undesirable and unwelcome.[21] This inequality is symbolized by the normalization of people who travel and land at airports with documents and problematization of those who arrive on unscheduled boats without documents or are smuggled in by cross-border truck drivers.[22] The Partnership suggests that high-income countries that have ratified the Refugee Convention can buy themselves out of their humanitarian obligations, which raises questions on their commitment to the Convention. It augments the precedence of low- and middle-income countries commodifying asylum. The introduction of financial incentives into what is conventionally a humanitarian act has the potential to promote unequal treatment of asylum-seekers with people who are deported from high-income countries accompanied by financial packages for the destination country receiving preferential treatment.

The quid pro quo UK-Rwanda Partnership and its commodification of asylum has ethical and reputational implications inherent in the use of financial resources to offload “unwanted” people on a country that is enticed by financial incentives and the perceived geopolitical capital of such partnerships. The fact that the UK considered similar partnerships with more African countries demonstrates its failure to apprehend the neo-colonial undertone of “dumping” “unwanted” people on African countries. The UK seems oblivious to Africans’ ongoing cogitations on unshackling Africa from neo-colonialism. Besides this political faux pas, the UK appears to be using its financial resources to sanitize an inhumane plan and, in the process, render Rwanda complicit and unpopular in public opinion in the greater continental scheme of things. If some of the images of the accommodation are anything to go by, the people who are “unwanted” in the UK will be housed in decent if not luxurious accommodation in contrast to the 135 500 African refugees living in refugee camps and 10 000 in urban areas in Rwanda.[23] While African governments in countries such as Rwanda and Uganda, both of which accepted to host Afghans following the US’s sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, cited moral responsibility and solidarity with forcibly displaced people, the hosting in decent accommodation of people who arrive as part of financial deals with high-income countries raises a moral question when juxtaposed with the circumstances of African refugees who have lived for decades in camps and refugee settlements in both countries. The Afghans are designated as “guests of the government [of Uganda] and the United States Embassy” who are “neither refugees nor asylum-seekers”.[24]

Is Rwanda Safe or Not?

The UK government reacted to the Supreme Court’s concern about security in Rwanda by upgrading the UK-Rwanda MoU to a treaty “firming up commitments from the original memorandum of understanding in a legally binding treaty”, including Rwanda committing that “those sent there cannot be sent to another country than the UK”.[25] The UK government also came up with the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 which “is designed to replace the Supreme Court’s judgment that Rwanda is not safe with a rule that the courts must treat Rwanda as safe”.[26] While the UK government declared Rwanda safe, Freedom in the World 2024 gave Rwanda scores of eight out of forty on political rights and fifteen out of sixty on civil liberties — a total score of twenty-three out of one hundred designated as “not free”.[27] The discrepancy between this score and the UK government’s declaration that Rwanda is safe implies that the UK government is more concerned about removing people from its territory than about protecting them.

In a research that I carried out with refugees in Nairobi from 2006-7, one Rwandan woman explained her reluctance to repatriate to Rwanda and challenged UNHCR officials who told Rwandans that their country was safe thus, “[Y]ou cannot see the insecurity in your eyes; you can only see that there is no security when you live there. Security is not in the mouth, it is what you experience when you go there [to Rwanda].” Lack of civil liberties is one of the reasons why people flee their countries. It is not clear how the UK will ensure that Rwanda does not renege on the commitments in the treaty upgrading the MoU. The paradox of threatening to send would-be asylum-seekers in the UK to Rwanda seems to be lost on the UK government’s position that Rwanda is safe because the threat itself implies that Rwanda is not a country the asylum-seekers would willingly go to.

Conclusion

The increasing numbers of asylum-seekers arriving in high-income countries outside formal third country resettlement are an indication of the failure by these countries to take burden-sharing seriously by making third country resettlement more accessible and adequately funding poor countries that host disproportionately huge numbers of refugees. Deporting asylum-seekers to low- and middle-income countries that are already overburdened by refugees causes reputational damage to the UK as a country that touts its stance on human rights. Rwanda and other African governments that will enter into similar partnerships face the challenge of converting the UK’s “problem” into their gain and averting the reputational damage caused by commodification of asylum. They need to look at the long-term impact of these partnerships on social cohesion in their societies in view of contentious politics around identity, indigeneity, and citizenship in many countries in Africa. It is not far-fetched to state that in many African countries, diversity has so far been a source of tension and contestation for power and resources. Building cohesive societies remains a challenge and countries that are considering similar partnerships need to seriously consider whether further diversification resolves or exacerbates political contestation and social disharmony and how this will impact the “newcomers”.

Footnotes

[1] UNHCR. 2023. “Refugee Data Finder.” https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/

[2] UNHCR. 2023, in footnote 1 above.

[3] UNHCR. 2023. “Trends at a Glance Report.” https://www.unhcr.org/mid-year-trends-report-2023

[4] Okoth, Felicity. 2023. “The EU’s Blind Spots.” Friedrich Erbert Stiftung. https://www.fes.de/en/displacement-migration-integration/article-page-flight-migration-integration/the-eus-blind-spots

[5] Oxfarm International. 2023. “East Africa Hosts 10% of Global Refugees while Ranking among 20 Least Developed Countries.” https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/east-africa-hosts-10-global-refugees-while-ranking-among-20-least-developed

[6] Jaji, Rose. 2022. “Historical Complexities and Transformations of Refugee Policies in Kenya and Tanzania.” Africa Today 69 (1-2): 88–109.

[7] See Crawley, Heaven and Dimitris Skleparis. 2018. “Refugees, Migrants, Neither, Both: Categorical Fetishism and the Politics of Bounding in Europe’s ‘Migration Crisis’”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (1): 48–64.

[8] Jaji, Rose. 2017. “Under the Shadow of Genocide: Rwandans, Ethnicity and Refugee Status.” Ethnicities 17 (1): 47–65.

[9] Amnesty International. 2021. “Lebanon: Torture of Syrian Refugees Arbitrarily Detained on Counter-Terror Charges.” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/03/lebanon-torture-of-syrian-refugees-arbitrarily-detained-on-counter-terror-charges/; Human Rights Watch. 2013. “You are all Terrorists” Kenyan Police Abuse of Refugees in Nairobi. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch.

[10] Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. 1951. https://www.unhcr.org/media/convention-and-protocol-relating-status-refugees

[11] Convention in footnote 2 above, pg. 3.

[12] Addendum to the Memorandum of Understanding between the UK and Rwanda. 2023. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/memorandum-of-understanding-mou-between-the-uk-and-rwanda/addendum-to-the-memorandum-of-understanding

[13] Addendum to the MoU in footnote 12 above.

[14] Addendum to the MoU in footnote 12 above.

[15] Ayalew, Tekalign, Fekadu Adugna, and Priya Deshingkar. 2018. “Social Embeddedness of Human Smuggling in East Africa: Brokering Ethiopian Migration to the Sudan.” University of Sussex. Journal contribution. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23306291.v2

[16] Gidron, Yotam. 2018. “How Israel’s Secret Refugee Deals Collapsed in the Light of Day.” The New Humanitarian. https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/refugees/community/2018/05/03/how-israels-secret-refugee-deals-collapsed-in-the-light-of-day

[17] The UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership. 2024. House of Commons Library. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9568/CBP-9568.pdf

[18] Addendum to the MoU in footnote 12 above.

[19] Addendum to the MoU in footnote 12 above.

[20] Dube, Mqondisi. 2024. “Botswana Rejects Controversial UK Proposal on Asylum-seekers.” VOA. https://www.voanews.com/a/botswana-rejects-controversial-uk-proposal-on-asylum-seekers/7582782.html

[21] Jaji, Rose. 2022. “The Bifurcated Migration Lexicon and Trend-defying Trajectories.” Migration Mobilities Bristol. https://migration.bristol.ac.uk/2022/10/18/the-bifurcated-migration-lexicon-and-trend-defying-trajectories/

[22] Jaji, Rose. 2024. Migration and the Racialisation of Space. The Current Column 18 March 2024. Bonn: IDOS. https://www.idos-research.de/fileadmin//migratedNewsAssets/Files/German_Institute_of_Development_and_Sustainability_EN_Jaji_18.03.2024.pdf

[23] Numbers based on UNHCR. 2023. “Where We Work: Rwanda.” https://www.unhcr.org/rw/where-we-work

[24] Mwijuke, Gilbert. 2021. “Minister Says Afghans in Uganda to Stay Longer.” The East African. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/minister-says-afghans-in-uganda-to-stay-longer-3625192

[25] The UK-Rwanda Partnership, in footnote 17 above.

[26] The UK-Rwanda Partnership, in footnote 17 above.

[27] Freedom in the World. 2024. “Rwanda Country Report 2024.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/rwanda/freedom-world/2024