Beyond the Jubilee

AS President, Dr Irfaan Ali and Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepare to lead their respective national delegations to next week’s Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) in Rawanda, the migrants deal between London and Kigali has started creating new headaches for the British leader, while President Ali and fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders also prepare for their equal share of bad headlines in Africa.

Britain’s plan to ship refugees to Rwanda after crossing the channel from France has been opposed at home ever since Home Office Minister Pritti Patel earlier this year unveiled the 125 million pounds deal aimed at “disincentivizing” channel crossings by migrants, mainly from African and Middle-East nations, as well as from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

Strong joint measures by France and Britain haven’t stopped or slowed the flow of asylum seekers who paid fortunes to get to Britain’s doorstep in Calais, but PM Johnson campaigned heavily on keeping immigrants at bay and the Rwanda deal is his way of delivering today.

But refugees arriving from Ukraine are welcomed with wide-open arms by Britons going heads-over-heels to provide the look-alike fellow European refugees with subsidised housing and access to finance, as well as to soup-kitchens and free food stands.

The New York Times, in an article on Tuesday (June 14) called the UK-Rwanda Plan a “hardline policy” that “aligns Mr Johnson’s immigration stance more closely with one of his predominant arguments for Brexit, which he pledged would enable Britain to ‘take back control’ of its borders.”

However, aid groups say the plan deepens the uncertainty for people who were already in precarious situations and would violate Britain’s commitment to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, which requires that asylum seekers not be forcibly sent to unsafe areas.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees also denounced the policy through its Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs, who said in April that “People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy” and “should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing.”

But UK Home Office figures report that in 2021, over 28,500 people arrived in Britain in small boats crossing the English Channel, up from 8,466 in 2020.

The London-Kigali pact gained headline currency at home and abroad over the weekend when Prince Charles was quoted as having said, in private, that he found it appalling.

Opponents at home include 25 top Church of England Bishops who voiced their views in a letter to The Times on Tuesday, describing the plan as “immoral,” “disgusting” and unhelpful.

Foreign Secretary Liz Trust’s argument that the plan will defeat the people smugglers’ operations is also disputed by a range of charities, hell-bent on legally stalling the migrant flights to Kigali.
The London-Kigali flight problems have come just as Rwanda prepares to host the CHOGM, starting June 23.

The bi-annual meeting, delayed for two years by COVID-19, will bring together leaders and delegations from 54 Commonwealth member-states, with Prince Charles representing Queen Elizabeth.

The British press is already speculating the presence of both PM Johnson and Prince Charles in Kigali will prompt media speculation alongside other issues at home such as the government’s handling of the Northern Ireland post-Brexit protocols, deaths and capture of Britons in Ukraine – and now, Russia’s ban of British journalists reporting in the Donbas region, accusing them of spreading misleading propaganda.

But while the British press will be keeping PM Johnson busy in Kigali, President Ali and fellow CARICOM leaders will, once again, witness and endure the discomfort of being seen as again unable to agree over which Caribbean candidate should be the next Commonwealth Secretary-General.

The majority of CARICOM member-states had declared support for the current Secretary-General, Dominica’s Dame Patricia Scotland, to serve an unchallenged second term — until Jamaica (at virtually the last minute) indicated its intention to field its Foreign Affairs Minister Kamina Johnson-Smith.

But while keeping an eye on the election sideshow in Kigali, President Ali will also have the lead responsibility to seek and encourage African support for and cooperation with CARICOM in pursuit of common agricultural and food-security goals, as well as meeting with fellow Commonwealth nations also involved in oil and gas and energy.

New terms of trade between North and South can no longer be based on or measured by old East and West yardsticks, but on the new global factors that together impede and threaten humankind, including (but not limited to) Climate Change, food and fuel insecurity and the general effects of the Ukraine war everywhere.

Britain will continue to tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum on if and when to make a full and formal apology to Caribbean and African nations for slavery and to India for indentureship, but today’s new realities have reversed historical tradition and most of the poorer ex-British colonies within the Commonwealth are better-placed now to help overcome the current grave global food crisis by taking new approaches to old problems and replacing competition for excessive profiteering with cooperation for basic and common human survival.

Britain is still counting the costs of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations at home and across the Commonwealth Kigali – and now London must brace for the bill to follow next week’s CHOGM.

Kigali, therefore, will be more than just another CHOGM, or even the last one with the Queen as head of all her realms, or just another battleground for CARICOM.

Instead, it’ll be yet another opportunity for Britain’s ex-colonies to do more than just knock elbows and discuss revolving agenda items, but to also take a common look at how best they can deepen Commonwealth multilateral cooperation in better and more equal ways, including of more benefits to the Caribbean.

The Caribbean, Africa and India will also have an opportunity to share ideas on common approaches to calls for reparations from Britain and European states that built empires off proceeds from centuries of genocide, slavery and ensnared indentureship in the British, French and Dutch West Indies and The Americas.