Rwanda seeks 100 million pounds from the UK in arbitration over scrapped refugee deal

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Rwanda told a panel of international arbitrators Wednesday that Britain still owes it 100 million pounds ($115 million) under a controversial refugee resettlement deal that Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped immediately after taking office in 2024.

The 2022 deal struck by Starmer's predecessor Rishi Sunak involved sending migrants who arrive in the U.K. as stowaways or in boats to the East African country. It included arrangements for payments to Rwanda to help cover costs.

Rwanda set up an asylum appeals chamber, created ministerial and administrative structures and "prepared reception facilities for the incoming refugees and incurred significant costs in doing so,” Rwanda’s Justice Minister and Attorney General Emmanuel Ugirashebuja told a hearing at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

But when Starmer took office, “The new prime minister declared the Rwanda scheme to be dead and buried on his first full day in office,” Ugirashebuja said. “The United Kingdom did not do Rwanda the courtesy of informing it in advance. Instead, Rwanda was left to read about these developments in the media.”

The British government is urging the court to dismiss Rwanda's claims, arguing that the two countries agreed in November 2024 that Rwanda would forgo the payments.

Rwanda denies that. Ugirashebuja told the panel that the UK “sought to walk away from its legal obligations.”

“A lot of the arbitration is going to turn around on the proof of that agreement,” Joelle Grogan, visiting senior research fellow at UCD Sutherland School of Law in Dublin, told The Associated Press in an interview.

The arbitration court based at the ornate Peace Palace in The Hague is likely to take months or more to reach a decision after hearings this week.

The plan was originally done by Sunak to send some migrants on a one-way trip to Rwanda. Starmer's home secretary at the time the deal was scrapped, Yvette Cooper, called it the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen.”

She estimated that the plan that ran into legal challenges and was widely criticized by human rights groups cost 700 million pounds ($904 million) in public funds including payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off and paying more than a thousand civil servants who worked on the scheme.

Under the 2022 deal, migrants were to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and, if successful, they would stay. Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the policy was unlawful because Rwanda is not a safe third country for migrants sent there.

Rwanda launched the arbitration proceedings in January, saying that the deal was torpedoed by Starmer “without prior notice to Rwanda.”

In the arbitral proceedings, Rwanda also alleges that the UK violated part of the deal in which London had agreed to resettle vulnerable refugees from Rwanda.

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.