Kampala, Uganda – Nal went to Europe in 2016, two years after Uganda promulgated its anti -homosexuality law, which criminalized homosexual relations and imposed extreme sanctions – including to prison. Nal, a lesbian, feared for his safety. She went to the Netherlands, where her sister lived, and planned to seek asylum once her visitor’s visa expired.
Since then, NAL, who has asked that Global Press Journal only uses the short form of his second name to avoid endangering his request for asylum in progress, said that her request was refused twice and that she made a third decision.
She is authorized to stay in the Netherlands while her call is being examined – for the moment. The Netherlands and other European countries plan to force the opportunity to force asylum seekers and other migrants to “return centers” in other countries, including Uganda.
In October 2024, Prime Minister Dick Schoof of the Netherlands announced that his government was planning to establish such a hub in Uganda, in particular for African asylum seekers whose requests had been refused. In the same month, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen encouraged member countries to consider using return centers outside the European Union. On March 11, the European Commission submitted a proposal to create poles and accelerate the abolition of people who illegally entered the EU member countries. The European Parliament and the Council have not yet agreed on the measure.
Global Press Journal has repeatedly contacted the Uganda Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a comment on the plans concerning the creation of such a hub in the country but has not received an official response. However, an official of the ministry who did not want to be appointed for fear of losing his job confirmed that the Dutch minister and ambassador met in January to discuss the issue.
Governments offering these offshore centers say that this will help tackle the immigration crisis – but criticisms are afraid to mark a dangerous outsourcing of the countries with a human rights file.
“As lesbian, how will the Dutch government guarantee my security in Uganda with the anti-homosexuality law in place?” Nal Wonders.
Although the Ugandan Constitutional Court has canceled the 2014 law which sent NAL to ask for asylum in the Netherlands, the government replaced it in 2023 by another law which ranks among the hardest in the world. It imposes various sanctions, including perpetuity imprisonment and, in some cases, the death penalty, for attempted, suspected or even promotion of homosexuality.
There is a high probability that asylum seekers in Europe who be sent to Uganda will not be safe, explains Musinguzi Ivan, an immigration and refugee lawyer based in Kampala. In addition, he says, it is not clear if the people sent to the return centers would arrive as tourists or refugees, or under another designation.
Governments offering these offshore centers say that this will help tackle the immigration crisis – but criticisms are afraid to mark a dangerous outsourcing of the countries with a human rights file.
If they come as refugees, Henry Byansi, a human rights lawyer, is not too concerned about the country’s ability to welcome them. “Uganda”, he says, “has always had a policy at the door open for refugees and could manage.”
A return center in Uganda could be a good thing for the country, he adds. Uganda could take advantage of it for funding and negotiate better prices and favorable policies for migrant workers.
Uganda welcomes more refugees than any other nation in Africa. About 1.7 million people, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, live here, according to the United Nations agency for the United Nations. The situation of refugees across Africa is now particularly disastrous because the United States, the main source of assistance in refugee services, announced that this would end all foreign aid programs. Refugees in the colonies not only in Uganda, but all over the world, fear where they will have their next meal.
The EU has long struggled with the idea of outsourcing asylum procedures to other countries. In April 2022, the Conservative government of the United Kingdom announced a partnership with Rwanda to move people who were illegally in the country in Rwanda.
Although the costs of implementing the policy are still uncertain, the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom estimated that the government would spend around 600 million British pounds ($ 759 million) to send the first 300 people, with an average of 2 million pounds per person (2.5 million US dollars).
On the other hand, the treatment of a person’s asylum complaint in the United Kingdom costs only 106,000 pounds (US $ 134,000), according to government data.
But after training a new government in 2024, the British Labor Party canceled the Rwanda return regime and redirected money to finance a new border agency, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
The push for the return hubs is a means that the governments of the EU “deny the responsibility of providing protection against refugees”, explains Olivia Sandberg, defender of the EU on the migration and asylum of Amnesty International, who maintained the Global Press Journal via Zoom.
The regimes are fundamentally defective, she says. “We don’t know who will be returned. We do not know who will be legally responsible, who will retain his competence for these people. We do not know what will happen to them if they would not have returned from there. We do not know which backup will be applied. ”
These ideas are expensive and difficult to implement, she says, and there is no transparency.