2024-10-10

BERLIN/ROME- As more and more EU countries are looking into asylum agreements with Rwanda or other third countries, this investigation sheds light into what is already happening in Rwanda after the MoU signed with the UK government.

Outsourcing European asylum to non-EU countries has become a mainstream political proposal against irregular migration. If turned into policy, it would effectively dismantle Europe’s asylum system, currently enshrined in the principle of non-refoulement, by which asylum seekers cannot be sent to places where their human dignity, rights and safety could be endangered.

This investigation explores the effects of outsourcing asylum to Rwanda. In 2022 the Rwandan government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK to enable the forced removal of asylum seekers crossing the Channel with small boats. Despite nobody was forcefully transferred from the UK before the deal was scrapped by the new Labour government in July 2024, some asylum seekers were secretly airlifted to Rwanda from Diego Garcia, a British Overseas Territory in the Pacific Ocean where Sri Lankan refugees arrived by boat in 2021 requesting asylum to the UK. As EU governments today keep looking into similar agreements with Rwanda and other non-EU partners to outsource asylum, the journalists travelled to Rwanda to interview those asylum seekers who are currently being transferred to Rwanda from Diego Garcia by the British administration.

The team investigate further the role of the UN's Emergency Transit Mechanism, a system of temporary resettlement to a camp 40 km from Kigali of the most vulnerable asylum seekers in Libya, where they wait for their asylum applications to be processed before being finally resettled elsewhere. The investigation considers these overlapping stories by interviewing and involving the voices of asylum seekers in Rwanda and their experiences of directly living through the consequences of the arbitrary construction of ‘safe third countries’ as pilot projects for further externalisation of European asylum.

Illustration by Hannah Kirmes-Daly.

Team members

Hannah Kirmes-Daly

Hannah Kirmes-Daly (Germany) is a multi-award-winning visual journalist and artist.

Hannah Kirmes-Daly

Leon Spring

Leon Spring (a pseudonym) is an itinerary freelance journalist.

Leon Spring
Mentor

Juliana Ruhfus

Juliana Ruhfus is an award-winning broadcaster and investigative journalist based in the UK.

Juliana Ruhfus
Supported
€17,000 allocated on 20/06/2024
ID
ECB/2024/PLUPRO/964

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