Britain will not have to pay Rwanda tens of millions of pounds over \u200bthe\u00a0cancelled deal\u00a0to deport asylum seekers to the East African nation, the \u200cPermanent Court of Arbitration said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Hague-based body said it had rejected all financial claims made by Rwanda, which had argued Britain still needed to honour the terms of the deal \u200bwhich Prime Minister Keir Starmer cancelled in 2024.<\/p>\n
Starmer scrapped the prior Conservative \u200bgovernment’s asylum plan, under which Rwanda would have been paid to take \u2060in migrants who had illegally arrived in Britain.<\/p>\n
Kigali was asking for at least \u00a360 \u200bmillion ($80 million), the court documents showed.<\/p>\n
The three-judge panel found by a majority that in November \u200b2024, Rwanda agreed in diplomatic notes “to forgo any additional payments by the United Kingdom in April 2025 and April 2026”, the court said.<\/p>\n
The details were released on Monday in excerpts of the ruling \u200bwhich the court said it made on May 15.<\/p>\n
In the end, only four people \u200bwent voluntarily to Rwanda under the asylum agreement, which ran into legal challenges before its cancellation.<\/p>\n
The Rwandan \u200cgovernment \u2060said it respected the court’s decision but said the issues were complex and open to different legal conclusions.<\/p>\n
“Rwanda will continue to work constructively with international partners, guided by international norms and mutually beneficial cooperation,” Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The \u200bBritish government said \u200bit had “robustly” defended its \u2060position.<\/p>\n
“The previous government\u2019s policy wasted time and \u00a3700 million of taxpayer money to send four volunteers to Rwanda,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Relations between \u200bBritain and Rwanda soured last year when London\u00a0paused some aid\u00a0\u200bover the \u2060Rwandan role in the war in Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwanda has faced global pressure over accusations that it supports the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo.<\/p>\n
Kigali denies backing M23 \u2060and \u200bhas blamed Congolese and Burundian forces for\u00a0fighting\u00a0that has \u200bkilled thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands in the past year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Britain will not have to pay Rwanda tens of millions of pounds over \u200bthe\u00a0cancelled deal\u00a0to deport asylum seekers to the East African nation, the \u200cPermanent Court of Arbitration said on Monday. The Hague-based body said it had rejected all financial claims made by Rwanda, which had argued Britain still needed to honour the terms of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,2377],"tags":[1734,3016,140],"class_list":["post-21024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-migration","tag-britain","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-rwanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21026,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21024\/revisions\/21026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}