Rwanda Sues UK for £50 Million Over Scrapped Asylum Deal

Rwanda’s decision to pursue legal action against the United Kingdom crystallizes the collapse of one of Europe’s most controversial migration experiments. Kigali has launched arbitral proceedings at the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration, seeking £50 million ($68.8 million) after London refused to disburse final payments under a 2022 asylum partnership designed to relocate migrants arriving in Britain by small boats. Rwanda began the inter-state case in November, according to the court’s website, which lists the proceedings as pending.

Michael Butera, chief technical adviser to Rwanda’s justice minister, said Kigali had tried diplomacy before turning to arbitration, adding: “Rwanda regrets that it has been necessary to pursue these claims in arbitration, but faced with the United Kingdom’s intransigence on these issues, it has been left with no other choice.”

Under the deal, only four volunteers ultimately traveled to Rwanda, despite the program’s central role in Britain’s post-Brexit border strategy.

“A Waste of Money”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped the agreement in July 2024, shortly after taking office, declaring it “dead and buried.” By then, London had already transferred £240 million ($330.9 million) to Kigali, with a further £50 million due in April. Starmer’s spokesman said this week the government would “robustly defend our position to protect British taxpayers.”

The UK Supreme Court had ruled in November 2023 that the scheme was unlawful under international law, a judgment that capped years of legal challenges.

Money Paid, Policy Reversed

The financial dispute now sits alongside widening geopolitical strains. Last year, Britain suspended most aid to Rwanda over Kigali’s backing of the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a move Rwanda labeled “punitive.”

Despite a U.S.-brokered April 27, 2025 agreement in which Rwanda and the DRC pledged a path to peace, violence surged again. By Dec. 10, 2025, some 200,000 people had fled a renewed M23 offensive, with 74 killed and 83 wounded as rebels advanced toward Uvira. The DRC government has repeatedly accused the Rwandan government for allegedly supporting M23 rebels.

“Send Them to Us”

The asylum pact was originally framed by Kigali as a humanitarian alternative. In July 2022, President Paul Kagame said Rwanda had offered the international community a way to spare migrants suffering in Libya and other places, asking, “can we have them in Rwanda?” adding, “We can let them stay here if they want.”

For London, the agreement was intended to deter irregular Channel crossings, which reached nearly 46,000 in 2022, fell back, then climbed again to about 37,000 in 2024 and more than 40,000 in 2025. Dozens have died attempting the journey.

Channel Crossings, Political Pressure

Immigration has remained central to British politics since Brexit in 2020. The government says it has removed 50,000 undocumented people, while in September it launched a “one-in-one-out” arrangement with France to swap asylum seekers for those with UK family ties, a policy criticized by NGOs as “cruel” and ineffective.

Starmer himself had attacked the Rwanda scheme while in opposition. In a Nov. 23, 2023 post on X, he wrote that then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had “wasted £140 million of taxpayers’ money on his unlawful Rwanda scheme,” arguing Labour instead would target smuggling gangs and clear the asylum backlog.

Now in office, Starmer faces Rwanda’s compensation claim even as Channel arrivals remain elevated and Britain recalibrates its deterrence strategy.

The arbitration exposes the hard limits of outsourcing asylum enforcement. With £240 million already paid, only four migrants relocated, and £50 million now contested in court, the case highlights how migration policy, legal risk, and regional security - from the English Channel to eastern Congo - have become tightly entangled.