By Enyichukwu Enemanna
UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly on Tuesday arrived Rwanda to sign a new agreement with Rwanda in an effort to revive the government’s plan of sending asylum seekers to the East African country after it was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling.
The new deal will target at addressing the ruling of the apex court which held that the Rwanda policy is unlawful.
It will create an opportunity for Cleverly to introduce “emergency legislation” at Westminster to try to revive it.
The Supreme Court had last month unanimously ruled that transferring asylum seekers to Rwanda would be at real risk of being sent back to their home countries without proper assessment of their claims.
The new UK-Rwanda treaty, a legal upgrade on an existing memorandum of understanding between the two countries, will aim at addressing concerns raised by the Supreme Court in the ruling.
Cleverly, who flew to Kigali overnight, said: “We are clear that Rwanda is a safe country, and we are working at pace to move forward with this partnership to stop the boats and save lives.”
“The Supreme Court recognised that changes may be delivered in future to address the conclusions they reached — and that is what we have set out to do together, with this new, internationally recognised treaty agreement.”
Cleverly will introduce legislation in the House of Commons later this week which he says will enable parliament to declare in law that Rwanda is “safe”.
That assertion may be met with a legal challenge.
Last year the UK and Rwanda signed what Sunak claims is a landmark “migration and economic development partnership”, which will see people arriving in Britain in small boats being relocated to Rwanda.
Opposition Labour Party and some Tory MPs have raised concern that the policy undermines UK’s human rights record.
