Sending migrants to Rwanda will save lives
The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury recently told the House of Lords that the UK’s recent migration reforms “fail to take a long-term and strategic view of the challenges of migration” and have “no sense at all of the … global nature of the challenges the world faces”.
I happen to agree with the Archbishop's call for long-term, global solutions. But listening to criticisms made of the partnership by peers, I was struck by their contradictions.
It seems to me that criticisms of the partnership as a narrow-minded approach to the migration crisis are themselves based on incomplete, narrow-minded perspectives of Rwanda's partnership with the UK. In reality, our partnership is specifically focused on overhauling an outdated, broken international system, and contributing to long-term global solutions to this global crisis.
According to the International Organisation for Maritime, at least 50,000 people have lost their lives on migration routes since 2014. Over half of them have been trying to reach Europe. Many of those lost are Africans.
This is a tragedy on an unthinkable scale. Our recent past in Rwanda, during which many of us experienced what it means to be a refugee, enables us to empathise with this human suffering.
We know in times of crisis, the focus must be on action: on practical and pragmatic solutions, rather than on moralising and dithering.
The Lord Archbishop will recall that the Bible guides us in the same way. “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth", reads John 3:18.
To drive effective and humane solutions, we must first understand what is driving this crisis. Tragically, migrants and asylum seekers do not believe they have the option to live safe, dignified, and prosperous lives in their immediate regional neighbourhoods. They also believe the global north is the perpetual provider of opportunity. What fuels this belief is debate for another day.
This is the structural defect that is at the very heart of the global migration crisis. No one should have to travel thousands of miles, crossing the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea, often at the mercy of ruthless people traffickers to reach opportunity and safety.
That is why we prioritise deliberate and major initiatives to create a safe haven in Rwanda for those who need it. We have one of the world’s most liberal visa and residency regimes.
We offer safety, access to public services, full legal rights (including employment rights, and guarantees against discrimination) to all asylum seekers and migrants. This includes over 140,000 refugees currently hosted in Rwanda, and many economic migrants, who have made Rwanda a nation that actually benefits from a ‘brain gain’.
We have pioneered initiatives with international partners, like the Emergency Transit Mechanism with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the African Union and EU, to rescue migrants trapped in Libyan detention camps and fly them to sanctuary in Rwanda.
We invest continuously in improving our refugee camps and accommodation facilities. Kigali is home to the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA) – formerly the only girl’s boarding school in Afghanistan which relocated to Rwanda after the fall of Kabul – and the Kepler Academy, which offers refugees the chance to obtain degrees.
In this context, our partnership with the UK is another important step in our ongoing efforts to shape sustainable, global solutions through international partnerships.
Aside from saving lives in the English Channel, and disrupting the business models of criminal people-smugglers, the truly ground-breaking aspect of the partnership is the investment opportunities for migrants to build new lives in Rwanda.
These investments recognise that the only way of addressing the enormous pressures that asylum systems in Europe face is by investing in safe places which are better placed to receive migrants, like Rwanda.
Investments in the infrastructure, public services, and job markets of rapidly developing countries not only contribute to wider development goals, they can create new centres of gravity for migrants.
Our migration partnership with the UK does exactly this. Our governments are working together to invest in our capacity to offer better lives for both migrants and Rwandans – through supporting jobs, education, public services, and housing.
On the Home Secretary’s recent visit, we demonstrated the incredible results that such programmes will create.
She saw examples of developments which migrants might one day call home, like the Gahanga Housing Project; she saw vocational training programmes, like the construction programme at Bwiza Riverside Estate, which offer Rwandans and migrants the chance to develop new skills and career prospects; she saw education facilities like the Kepler Academy, where migrants can be supported to earn degrees and other qualifications.
These types of programmes are the future of a sustained global effort to end dangerous, illegal migration. We hope that, in the future, global co-operation and international investment mean that across the world, migrants and refugees can quickly and safely reach nearby cities with welcoming migration policies, which offer safety, opportunity, and dignity.
For the moment, global progress towards achieving this goal is paralysed by the polarisation and politicisation of the global debate around migration and asylum. In the UK, outdated and frankly backward impressions of Rwanda have further derailed these discussions.
Words are, however, no substitute for action, and for results. As such, we are confident that once our partnership kicks into gear, the path towards a sustainable solution to this global crisis will become clearer; maybe then, we will finally be ready for a more reasoned discussion about global migration.
Johnston Busingye is the High Commissioner of Rwanda to the United Kingdom.
