GENEVA, Switzerland — The
UN refugee chief
on Monday slammed an imminent UK plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as “all
wrong”, a day before the first planeload of claimants is due to depart.
اضافة اعلان
“We believe that this is all wrong ... for so many
reasons,” Filippo Grandi told reporters.
A planeload of 31 claimants is due to depart Tuesday
as part of an agreement reached with Kigali that
London says is aimed at
deterring illegal migrants from undertaking perilous crossings of the English
Channel by boat.
An emergency appeal to halt the plan — brought by
refugee charities and a trade union which called it immoral, dangerous, and
counter-productive — was defeated by the Court of Appeal in London on Monday.
Home Secretary Priti Patel and
Prime Minister Boris Johnson have remained unbowed by the criticism, insisting the policy is needed
to stop a flood of all-too-often deadly migrant crossings of the channel from
France.
More than 10,000 migrants have made the journey so
far this year, a huge increase on prior years.
The one-way flights to Rwanda are intended to deter
others from entering Britain by illegal routes, and offer those who do try a
new life there instead.
Grandi said he also wanted to end dangerous
journeys, but reiterated the UNHCR’s position that exporting asylum seekers was
not the way to address the issue.
“The UK says ... we do this to save people from
dangerous journeys. Let me doubt that a little bit,” he said.
“Saving people from dangerous journeys is great, is
absolutely great. But is that the right way to do it?” he asked. “I don’t think
so.”
The UN agency has raised concerns about a lack of
legal redress in Rwanda and potential discrimination against gay claimants.
Britain with its advanced structures and large
resources should not be “exporting its responsibility to another country,”
Grandi said.
He said Rwanda had
been “quite good to refugees”, having taken in and dealt efficiently with tens
of thousands from the
Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.
But he stressed that its structures and resources
were vastly different from those found in Britain, and that Rwanda was not
equipped to adopt the UK system for refugee status determination.
That “is a completely different ballgame,” he said.
The UN refugee chief also warned that the UK move
provided a poor example that other countries might follow, with disastrous
effect.
He pointed out that there are many countries in
Africa and elsewhere that are far poorer than Britain hosting hundreds of
thousands and even millions of refugees.
“What am I going to tell them if they say a rich
country like the UK, they are sending them abroad, I will do the same. I close
my border, ... and they can go to another country?”
“The precedent that this creates is catastrophic.”
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