Rwanda says it has an “excellent record of taking care of refugees”, and has criticised a legal ruling in the UK that said it was unlawful to deport their asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Rwandan government spokeswoman Yvonne Makolo told the BBC’s Newsday programme that judges were wrong to say there weren’t enough guarantees that Rwanda wouldn’t send back refugees to their home countries – calling it “a very narrow aspect of this issue”.
She said Rwanda was a signatory to the UN refugee convention and “we do not in policy or practice send back to dangerous situations”.
Ms Makolo said country has 140,000 refugees and has been working with the UN refugee agency to evacuate endangered migrants in Libya since 2019.
“We know what it is to flee and seek safety. Many of us have lived outside the country, we’ve been forced to leave… and come back. So we empathise with those in this situation,” she told the BBC.
She said the information being given about Rwanda was “not sufficient or has been misunderstood”, adding that the country had been ranked one of the safest in the world.
“If there are issues that come up in this [asylum] programme and on the distorted views of what Rwanda is and how we govern this country, we are happy to explain – a lot of it is unjustified.”