The United Kingdom is preparing to begin sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda after the passage of a controversial law in British Parliament last week, months before the country is expected to hold national elections. The plan to send those seeking refuge in the UK to a country thousands of miles away marks the latest effort by a Western nation to outsource its immigration challenges. Yet the Rwanda initiative serves as a potentially landmark test of such efforts, pushing the boundaries of each country’s responsibilities towards refugees under international law and setting a template that many others might be tempted to follow. Human rights groups have criticised the plan, which, they argue, represents an abdication by Britain of its duty towards asylum-seekers and exposes people who have already had to flee war, violence or economic desperation to the possibility of fresh abuse. The timing of the law is poignant: April marks 30 years since the horrific Rwandan genocide when hundreds of thousands of the minority Tutsis were massacred by armed Hutu militias. Today, Rwanda remains deeply divided, with a vast unemployment crisis. Many migrant rights groups are worried that the introduction of a new minority group could further add to the tensions in that society.

Yet, the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and his Conservative Party have made the deportation plan one of the centrepieces of their campaign for the upcoming elections in which they are expected to face an uphill struggle in their bid to retain power. But Britain is not the only country where refugees are at the heart of heated politics. In the United States of America, the Republican Party and its presumptive nominee, the former president, Donald Trump, are citing the surge of undocumented migrants along the southern border to accuse the incumbent president, Joe Biden, of failing to ensure American security. Stopping migrants from arriving at her country’s shores is also a pivotal part of the promise of the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to her supporters: she recently signed deals with Tunisia to check the flow of asylum-seekers to Europe. The European Union added to a series of controversial agreements aimed at stopping migrants by signing a similar new pact with Egypt. If British voters support the politics of fear-mongering over refugees, the political class in other European countries and beyond will conclude that the strategy works politically, whether or not it makes those nations safer.