A week before the first arrivals, workers were putting the finishing touches on a small wooden shed next to the inn’s restaurant. “This will be a store where they can buy whatever they need here instead of going out,” explained Ismael Bakina, its chief executive officer. Two covered areas in the garden will serve as smoking areas and a tent further away will serve as an interview room and game area.
There is an airport-style security check before reception, including baggage scanners and guards with metal detectors. They are polite, professional and thorough. “As you can see, we are ready for migrants, even today,” Bakina said, speaking to CNN just hours before the first round of legal challenges against deportation was brought in. out in the UK last week. Legal cases against the policy have so far been unsuccessful and the first flight from the UK to Rwanda will take off on Tuesday.
Whenever they arrived, the two migrants would share each room, with shared bathrooms and laundry areas on each floor. They will also have two red carpet prayer areas overlooking the hills of Kigali, free Wi-Fi and computers to keep up with their legal cases. The Rwandan authorities point to the relative privileges migrants will have here, compared with those in British detention facilities.
Rwanda government spokesman Yolande Makolo told CNN: “We want them to have safe, dignified accommodation and also a package that they will get so they can improve their academic skills, have can start a business”.
The UK has said it will pay Rwanda 120 million pounds ($145 million) over the next five years to fund the program. In addition, the UK has also promised to pay the costs of processing and integration for each displaced person, including the cost of legal advice, case staff, interpreters, accommodation, food and healthcare. strong. According to a parliamentary research briefing, the UK government said it expected these costs to be similar to the costs of applying for asylum in the UK, at around £12,000 per person.
The UK has declined to disclose the cost of the flights it will charter to transport the deportees to Rwanda. The Home Office said in its latest annual report it has paid £8.6 million to charter 47 deportation flights carrying 883 people in 2020. While the cost of individual flights varies depending on on destination, the numbers mean that on average, the Home Office spent £183,000. per flight or £9,700 per person.
Since there is no limit on the number of migrants, thousands of people are likely to flock to Kigali within the first five years of the scheme.
HRW has been monitoring and investigating human rights conditions in Rwanda for decades and has documented violations ranging from “suppression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture by Rwandan government.”
The UK’s plan has also drawn criticism from the only opposition party against Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the last election, the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, who say the country cannot afford it. . “Rwanda is the most populous country in Africa. Do you think for Rwanda it would be easy to help these people?” Secretary General Jean Claude Ntezimana told CNN.
Rwanda is roughly one-tenth the size of the UK but is home to nearly 13 million people, almost one-fifth of the UK’s population.
The Greens accuse the UK of breaching its international obligations by transporting its unwanted migrants 4,000 miles away to Rwanda. “When it’s not the choice of the refugees, it’s inhumane and illegal,” Ntezimana said.
The Rwandan government maintains it is completely legal.
“No laws have been violated with this partnership,” Makolo told CNN. “There is nothing in the Refugee Convention that prevents asylum seekers from being transferred to another safe country.”
Makolo acknowledged that a similar program with Israel did not work and that Rwanda abandoned it “very quickly”. However, she said, the UK migration deal is completely different and will work out. In fact, she said, Rwanda could soon accept migrants from Denmark as well, with negotiations coming to an end.
Most recently, Rwanda has partnered with the United Nations refugee agency to receive vulnerable asylum seekers evacuated from Libya. More than 1,000 migrants passed through the Gashora Emergency Transit Center during the three years of the program’s operation. The average migrant stays for four to eight months before being resettled abroad, according to the center’s manager. Migrants have three options: to resettle elsewhere, voluntarily repatriate to their homeland, or to integrate locally into Rwandan society. According to Fares Ruyumbu, the camp manager, no one chose the latter two.
“You can’t compare it (Libya and Rwanda),” said Zemen Fesaha, 26, an Eritrean refugee at the Gashora transit hub. He spent four years in what he described as horrendous conditions in Libya, repeatedly trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe without success. “It’s like going from hell to heaven.”
Although the 11 months he spent in Rwanda at the camp were safer and easier, he was determined to leave.
And Zemen is not alone in this. None of the refugees at the emergency center CNN spoke to wanted to stay in Rwanda.
Nyalada Gatluak Jany, 26, from South Sudan, dreams of moving to Finland with her 1-and-a-half year old son. “What I want is not here, it is there,” she said.
