The British Lords expressed on Monday evening January 22 their disapproval of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's controversial plan to expel migrants to Rwanda, opposing the ratification of the treaty signed with Kigali on which his future law.

A majority of representatives sitting in the upper house of Parliament have asked the government to postpone the ratification of this treaty until it has been effectively demonstrated that Rwanda is a safe host country for the migrants who will be expelled there. .

Two hundred and fourteen Lords followed the recommendation of a cross-partisan committee, which found in a report published last week that the guarantees provided by the treaty were "incomplete", while 171 of them opposed the motion.

It is on the basis of this treaty that the conservative government's bill, the basis of the government's policy to combat illegal immigration, was drawn up.

The text signed in December with Kigali is in fact supposed to respond to the concerns of the British Supreme Court, which had judged the project illegal in its previous version for fear that asylum seekers would then be transferred to other countries where they would be in hazard.

One of the last government maps

This is one of the Conservative government's last cards to save this emblematic project, repeatedly defeated since its announcement in 2022 by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The House of Commons, where the elected deputies sit, adopted it last week by a comfortable majority, after a hectic examination by the right of the conservative party inclined to toughen the text and the resignation of several of its executives.

In the process, Rishi Sunak urged the Lords to also adopt this project as quickly as possible, strongly criticized by humanitarian associations, which he hopes to implement before the legislative elections scheduled for the end of 2024.

Unlike elected members of the House of Commons, the Lords do not have the power to block the ratification of a treaty.

But the vote on this motion, to which the government will have to provide a response, suggests new difficulties for this controversial bill.

The text, which defines Rwanda as a safe third country and prevents the return of migrants to their countries of origin, is due to be debated in the upper house of the British Parliament next week.

With AFP

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