Plans to send some asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda are a breach of international law, the UN's refugee agency has said.
The UNHCR said attempting to "shift responsibility" for claims of refugee status was "unacceptable". Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he believes the scheme complies with international law.
The British government has been accused of trading people like commodities after it unveiled a controversial plan to send asylum seekers on a one-way ticket 6,000km away to Rwanda.
In a speech on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said anyone who has entered the United Kingdom irregularly since the start of the year “may” be relocated to the country in central-east Africa.
“Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not,” he said in Kent, a county in the UK’s southeast and a hotspot for refugees and migrants who cross the English Channel and land on British soil.
Johnson said “thousands of refugees” could be transported during the years under the scheme, which, he argued, would “save countless lives” and clamp down on human smugglers.
Many disagreed, however. Rights groups and refugee organisations swiftly blasted what they called a “cruel”, “inhumane” and “neo-colonial” plan, and questioned both its cost to the British taxpayers and effect on migration.
Government plans to send unauthorised asylum seekers on a one-way ticket to Rwanda have been roundly condemned as inhumane and unworkable. The prime minister on Thursday outlined the proposals to hand an initial down-payment of £120m to Paul Kagame’s administration in the hope that it will accept “tens of thousands” of people.
UNHCR also said that the plan would increase risks and cause refugees to look for alternative routes, putting more pressure on front line states.
"Experience shows that these agreements are eye-wateringly expensive usually. They often violate international law. They don't lead to solutions, rather to widespread detention or to more smuggling," UNHCR Senior legal officer Larry Bottinick told British radio station Times Radio on Thursday.
Human Rights Watch was fiercely critical of the plan, issuing a strongly-worded statement.
"Rwanda's appalling human rights record is well documented," it said.
"Rwanda has a known track record of extrajudicial killings, suspicious deaths in custody, unlawful or arbitrary detention, torture, and abusive prosecutions, particularly targeting critics and dissidents. In fact, the UK directly raised its concerns about respect for human rights with Rwanda, and grants asylum to Rwandans who have fled the country, including four just last year," it said, adding, "At a time when the people of the UK have opened their hearts and homes to Ukrainians, the government is choosing to act with cruelty and rip up their obligations to others fleeing war and persecution."
Amnesty International UK's Refugee and Migrant Rights Director Steve Valdez-Symonds described the plan as "shockingly ill-conceived."
"Sending people to another country -- let alone one with such a dismal human rights record -- for asylum 'processing' is the very height of irresponsibility and shows how far removed from humanity and reality the Government now is on asylum issues," Valdez-Symonds said in a statement.
As part of the new plan, the British Royal Navy will take over operational command from Border Force in the English Channel "with the aim that no boat makes it to the UK undetected," Johnson said.
It also allows UK authorities to prosecute those who arrive illegally, "with life sentences for anyone piloting the boats," he said.
The English Channel, a narrow waterway between Britain and France, is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Refugees and migrants fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty in the world's poorest or war-torn countries risk the dangerous crossing, often in dinghies unfit for the voyage and at the mercy of people smugglers, hoping to claim asylum or economic opportunities in Britain.
