British deportation of Rwanda refugees costs £700 million

British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the previous government spent £700 million ($905.2 million) on an unimplemented program to deport undocumented migrants to Rwanda.

Two years after the previous Government launched it, I can report it has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million, [roughly $905 million] in order to send just four volunteers [to Rwanda], Cooper told the House of Commons on Monday.

She noted that these funds include 290 million pounds in compensation payments to the Rwandan government, as well as chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them, and paying for more than a thousand civil servants to work on the scheme.

In total, the previous British government planned to spend 10 billion pounds on the human trafficking scheme, Cooper said.

At the same time, she added that the new government plans to stop placing migrants in hotels, reduce the time it takes to process migrants’ asylum applications, and repeal the provision that prevents migrants who arrive irregularly from seeking asylum.

Great Britain and Rwanda signed a migration agreement in 2022, under which people identified by the British government as undocumented migrants or asylum seekers will be deported to Rwanda for processing, asylum and resettlement.

The scheme has drawn criticism from human rights organizations, as well as numerous politicians and officials within the UK. In late May, Ex-UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that Rwanda flights would not take off before the general elections in the country.

In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.

About 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country. In 1959, the Hutus overthrew the British supported Tutsi monarchy and tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries, including Uganda.

A group of Tutsi exiles formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and fighting continued until a 1993 peace deal was agreed.

On July 6, 2024 newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed the plans to scrap the controversial Rwanda deportation scheme.

BBC / Sputnik / ABC Flash Point Africa Deportation News 2024.