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asylum seekers

The Morality of Sending Asylum Seekers to Rwanda

Written by Doug McConnell

The government has recently claimed that their policy to send asylum seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda as part of the UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership is “completely moral” and responds to an “urgent moral imperative”. The justification for these claims is that the policy will act as a “very considerable deterrent” to asylum seekers and break the business model of people smugglers who put asylum seekers at risk of drowning in the English Channel. Needless to say, these claims about the morality of the Rwanda policy are highly contested. Here, I assess whether they stand up to even the most charitable assessment.Read More »The Morality of Sending Asylum Seekers to Rwanda

FGM and the Golden Rule

When Binta Jobe [not her real name] was nine, she was taken into the Gambian bush where she suffered female genital mutilation at the hands of an amateur surgeon without anaesthetic. She is now a 23-year-old asylum seeker in the UK, trying to prevent her three-year-old daughter from a similar experience if she is forcibly returned to the Gambia.Read More »FGM and the Golden Rule