- Home Office failed to carry out risk assessment into climate harms to refugees when developing Rwanda policy
- This despite UK Government paper outlining major climate threats posed to East African country
- Former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu says: “This is a shameful moral failure”
- Ex Home Office official: “The ignorance about climate change among the senior leadership was appalling.”
- New Christian Aid report, Climate crisis and the UK’s Rwanda refugee policy outlines bank of evidence from IPCC and others showing Rwanda unsuitable destination for refugees.
The Home Office failed to undertake a climate risk assessment into the impact on refugees sent to Rwanda before announcing their policy to deport UK asylum seekers to the African country, a new report by Christian Aid has revealed.
The revelation, uncovered under freedom of information, comes despite UK Government documents outlining the many climate related threats already affecting Rwanda and forecasting that these will get worse in coming years.
A spokesperson from the Home Office told Christian Aid: “We have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information which you have requested relating to a specific risk assessment on the impact of climate change for relocated individuals transferred to Rwanda.”
Had the Home Office consulted colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Christian Aid argues they would have discovered that Rwanda faces a host of climate threats. The publication, Climate risk report for the East Africa region, produced by the FCDO in conjunction with the Met Office, outlines the following dangers for Rwanda:
“Flood risks in urban areas and infrastructure. Heavy rainfall and soil erosion which threatens food security. Household water security in the eastern, drier part of the country. Health risks related to changing patterns of vector borne disease transmission and higher temperatures.” It also goes into more detail which is highlighted in Christian Aid’s report, Climate crisis and the UK’s Rwanda refugee policy.
Christian Aid’s analysis details the stark warnings of the climate threats posed to refugees sent to Rwanda as outlined by the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative among others. According to the latter, Rwanda is the joint tenth most vulnerable country in the world at 172 out of 182 countries. When its ability to adapt to some of these impacts is factored in the overall GAIN Index placing for Rwanda is 124 out of 182 countries.
In his foreword to the new report, the former Archbishop of York, and Chair of Christian Aid, Dr John Sentamu, condemned the Government’s policy and lack of consideration for Rwanda’s climate. He said: “The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, recently described the vision of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda as her “dream” and “obsession”. This may be her dream but it is a nightmare for those refugees who have come to the UK seeking sanctuary from persecution.
“The Government’s decision to deport refugees seeking asylum to Rwanda is abhorrent and has been widely criticised for being a dereliction of our human rights responsibilities. It’s clear to me this is the case and it’s a shameful moral failure by our Government that they seek to send vulnerable people to a country with numerous human rights concerns.
“As a proud African I have a great love for my continent but I’m also aware it faces many challenges, not least a climate crisis not of its own making. Rwanda is going to become an increasingly inhospitable place in the coming decades due to climate change, as the Government’s own findings, and this report, shows. The fact that the Home Office hasn’t even done a risk assessment on the climate dangers posed to refugees it plans to deport there, reveals its lack of care and concern for their wellbeing.”
Sam Wakeling, an official in the Home Office between 2016 and 2022, in the Digital Data and Technology department, said he was horrified at the way climate change is handled by the department.
He said: “In my experience of the Home Office, including being part of various climate and sustainability initiatives in the department, understanding of climate change, especially among the senior leadership is narrow or non-existent. There are tiny pockets of officials working on isolated aspects of "net zero", but while this is kept as only a techological task it cannot hope to offer a coherent basis for realising the vast human impact of what the department does and doesn't do to address the climate crisis.
“Senior Home Office staff treat the climate crisis as simply a problem of other parts of government, yet the Rwanda deportation plan has obvious climate implications that they seem oblivious to.
“The Home Office still has no published climate strategy to reduce risk to the public. But it is far from inactive on the climate crisis. Along with restricting access to refugee protection it has adopted responsibility for “Risks to the UK from climate-related international human mobility” (from the Climate Change Committee’s adaptation plan). It is chilling that the department sees families forced from their homes and seeking protection and better lives as a main threat of climate change, while using draconian laws to curtail the right to protest against the fossil fuel industry which is causing the problem.”
Mohmed Adow, Director of African climate and energy think tank, Power Shift Africa, said:
“The UK shirking its responsibility to refugees and seeking to deport them to Rwanda is shameful. It’s especially worrying to learn that the Home Office didn’t even consider the impact of climate change when formulating one of their major flagship policies. Here in Africa we are on the front line of a climate crisis. We are experiencing terrible droughts, devastating storms and ever hotter temperatures bring pests and disease which affect our lives and livelihoods. If the UK wants to claim to understand climate change, let alone be a leader on it, it needs to have more understanding of its impact across the world.”
Tim Naor Hilton, Chief Executive of Refugee Action, said:
“We all want to live our lives in safety and free from war, torture and persecution. But the Government wants to deny people this basic human need and deport refugees to parts of the world where they have no family, no community and no desire to be there.
“There isn’t a country in the world that’s suitable for people seeking safety to be deported to. Refugees must have their claim assessed in the UK and be allowed to rebuild their lives here in safety."
Notes to editors
The Christian Aid report can be downloaded on this web page.
