22 April 2022

Dear John xxxxxx,

Touted by its champions as a way to gain control over irregular migration, the deal the United Kingdom struck recently to ship certain asylum seekers to Rwanda represents the next level in the suite of policies that some high-income countries are taking to externalise their migration management.

If the arrangement succeeds in relocating sizeable numbers of asylum seekers to Rwanda and in deterring irregular entries, including boat arrivals from across the Channel, other countries eager to limit the right to seek asylum upon entry could soon embrace similar deals themselves.

Yet, as a new Migration Policy Institute Europe commentary argues, it is far from clear whether the accord can succeed on either the relocation or deterrence level.

‘For deterrence to have a chance at efficacy, the threat of relocation must be sufficiently credible to change the migration calculus. But the path to a programme that regularly, if not consistently, relocates asylum seekers to Rwanda is fraught with obstacles,’ Hanne Beirens and Samuel Davidoff-Gore write.

International law and legal challenges could serve to limit the numbers of asylum seekers who are sent to Rwanda. And, the commentary notes, past experience with deterrence-minded enforcement policies reflect that they do not halt migration, instead channeling people to less popular routes and pushing them further into the hands of smugglers and traffickers.

What is clear, the analysts contend, is that if the deal survives expected legal challenges and becomes operational, the damage to the DNA of the post-World War II protection system will be severe. ‘Its blow to the principle of territorial asylum is a serious one’, they conclude.

You can read the commentary here: www.migrationpolicy.org/news/uk-rwanda-asylum-agreement.

And for information on the ‘Beyond Territorial Asylum: Making Protection Work in a Bordered World’ project MPI is conducting with the Robert Bosch Stiftung, click here.

With appreciation, as always, for your interest in our work,

Michelle Mittelstadt
Director of Communications
MPI Europe

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