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The Minister of the Interior has already visited the country as part of a Rwandan government training program for lawyers. Suella Braverman is due to travel to Rwanda as Britain's £140m deal to send asylum seekers to the country remains mired in legal challenges. The Home Secretary must reaffirm her commitment to the agreement reached in April 2022 by her predecessor Priti Patel, which has so far failed to meet the government's goal of deterring small boat crossings.
"Rwanda is a dynamic country with a prosperous economy," he told parliament on Monday. “I enjoyed visiting it myself, twice, and can't wait to visit again.”
Ms. Braverman will meet senior Rwandan politicians and visit facilities set up under the Partnership for Migration and Economic Development, which is an integral part of the new illegal immigration bill.
Rishi Sunak had a phone call with Mr Kagame the day the bill was announced, and Downing Street said they were "committed to continuing to work together to ensure the success of this important partnership."
The bill is intended to allow the government to detain and deport asylum seekers who arrive on small boats without considering their claims, in what the UN Refugee Agency has called an "asylum ban."
Braverman will visit facilities in Rwanda as part of his trip
Legal challenges are expected and practical questions are raised about where people can be sent, while the only agreements reached have been with Albania and Rwanda.
Ms Braverman told MPs this week: “Our partnership with Rwanda knows no bounds. We are ready to get it up and running on a full scale as soon as legally possible. »
No asylum seekers have yet been sent to Kigali, and several people from countries including Iran, Iraq and Syria are contesting plans to send them back.
Next month, Appeal Court judges will consider arguments about "the adequacy of Rwanda's asylum system" and whether the government erred in declaring it a safe country for transfers.
Priti Patel and Rwandan Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Vincent Biruta signed a partnership for migration and economic development in Kigali in April.
The High Court has previously heard that politically motivated human rights abuses including torture, murder and kidnapping have prevented Rwanda from considering an asylum deal by the Foreign Office in 2021.
But it was put back on the list of potential countries after Boris Johnson and Priti Patel showed "particular interest".
The scheme remains on hold while the legal battle continues, and although the High Court ruled the policy legal in its entirety in December, all individual dismissal orders considered have been struck down.
An attempted robbery last June saw asylum seekers forcibly transported to a plane and held, some harming themselves and threatening suicide in desperate scenes before it was called off following court orders from the European Court of Human Rights.
An initial amount of 120 million livres sterling will be sent to Rwanda by the firm de l'accord as "financement du développement", and 20 million livres sterling supplémentaires ont été remis pour les frais d'installation plus tard l 'last year.
The Rwandan government has not ruled out requesting additional payments, which add up to a minimum three-year funding for each “relocated individual”.
Ms Braverman was a lawyer and Conservative Party electoral candidate during her previous visits to Rwanda in 2008 and 2010, and has not made the work public since her election to parliament in 2015.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell in Kigali in 2017
At the time, he suggested the country lacked a "properly functioning legal system" but has since told lawmakers Rwanda is a "fundamentally safe country" suitable for receiving UK asylum seekers.
Writing in 2011 under her maiden name Suella Fernandes, Ms. Braverman said she was part of a team of volunteer attorneys who "taught judges advocacy, legal writing, negotiation and substantive law, government attorneys, community justice attorneys, and students of law.
He traveled with the Umubano Project, which was described on its now-defunct website as "the Conservative Party's social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone."
It is unclear if Ms Braverman met the Rwandan president, although Mr Kagame attended some events and told a local newspaper that the Umubano project was "significant and will help people in the UK understand better to Rwanda".
Ms Braverman also co-founded a charity called the Africa Justice Foundation, which she later left, which has cooperated with Kigali and trained lawyers who now work at the Rwandan Ministry of Justice.
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Paul Kagame/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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