Akufo-Addo Gov’t In Talks With UK To Receive Excess Refugees

The Akufo-Addo government is reportedly in talks with the UK government to have a deluge of asylum seekers in the UK, spilled onto Ghana.

An August 30 tweet by Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, announced virtual talks with UK’s Africa Minister, James Duddridge, over what is believed to be the UK’s request to have Ghana receive excess refugees and asylum seekers from a deluge that has overwhelmed the UK’s asylum system.

“During the meeting, the Hon. Minister and the RT. Hon. discussed issues of mutual interest between Ghana and the UK, particularly in areas of security and migration, notably in matters relating to third-country asylum partnerships as the UK makes plans to reform its asylum system and tackle illegal migration,” the Foreign Minister wrote.

The tweet also thanked the UK government for the donation of 249,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Ayorkor Botchwey has since deleted the tweet but the tweet has spilled the beans for many. If a deal is struck, Ghana could receive asylum seekers and refugees mainly from Afghanistan, Whatsup News gathered.

UK-based SkyNews quotes Colin Yeo, a human rights barrister at Garden Court Chambers as saying: “The plan the UK has is to send asylum seekers to another country where that country will take responsibility for taking decisions on their claims. It’s conceivable the UK government has been talking to the Ghanaian government about this asylum off-shoring plan that the government says it wants to do.”

“It looks like a really bad idea from a humanitarian and legal point of view because once the UK removes someone to a third country whether it’s Ghana or somewhere else essentially they lose control over what happens there. You’d have to detain people in camps in case they try to resume their journey to the UK. The conditions of detention might well be far less than ideal and that would breach the human rights of the migrants.” 

After evacuating thousands of refugees from Afghanistan and an influx of thousands of migrants crossing the Channel illegally in small boats there is increasing pressure on the government to fix what is already called its ‘”broken asylum system” reports SkyNews.

It adds that with so many arrivals there are concerns about the pressure on finding accommodation for new arrivals – starkly highlighted in a letter by the Immigration Minister Kevin Foster to MPs looking into immigration facilities.