On January 17, 2024, British lawmakers passed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s bill to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Despite strongly criticizing the bill during its first debate, the House of Lords subsequently voted to move the bill to the next stage.

The UK Supreme Court previously ruled that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would be against with domestic and international law.

In an interview with ABC News Australia, Feinstein Senior Researcher Dr. Evan Easton-Calabria addressed the bill and ongoing legislative proceedings.

“We’ve seen really clearly from judges, from legal scholars, from the United Nations, that this is incompatible with human rights law….
 
This [vote] just takes us one step closer to what, frankly, will be a very expensive and also hugely problematic scheme that has negative ramifications for the UK public as well as for asylum seekers.”

In closing, Easton-Calabria points out that Rwanda president Paul Kagame has said he would be happy for the scheme to be scrapped.

Listen to the interview here.