Immigration minister Robert Jenrick gave lessons to Rwandan government lawyers as part of a charity project supported by the country’s president Paul Kagame, The Independent can reveal.
Then a solicitor, he travelled to the country on a 2008 trip for Tory MPs and party members, including future home secretary Suella Braverman.
Mr Jenrick, who has been criticised for allegedly ordering staff to paint over cheerful paintings at a Kent asylum unit for children, was elected to parliament six years later and now has a leading role in implementing the Rwanda migration deal.
After it was ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal last week, Mr Jenrick fiercely defended the policy, telling MPs it was “categorically untrue” that asylum seekers were at risk in the country.
The court heard that Rwandan police shot at least 12 refugees dead during a 2018 protest over food shortages, and that more recently authorities had turned away Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers.
The Court of Appeal judgment called Rwanda “a one-party state which reacts unfavourably to dissent”, but Mr Jenrick told parliament he had travelled there himself and added: “It is a country that is safe and where we have a good working relationship.
“As soon as we have the ability to do so through the courts, we will get those flights off to Rwanda.”
His two-week visit in 2008 was part of Project Umubano, which was described on its website as “the Conservative Party’s social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone” and ran from 2007 to 2017.
Other future and current MPs involved included Jeremy Hunt, Tobias Ellwood, Desmond Swayne, Rob Halfon, Damian Hinds, Mark Pawsey, Maggie Throup, Wendy Morton and Pauline Latham.
President Kagame is understood to have attended some events and told a local newspaper Project Umubano was “meaningful and will help people back in the UK understand Rwanda better”.
It was led by international development minister Andrew Mitchell, who told The Independent: “Mr Jenrick used his legal skills to great effect as part of the Conservative Party’s social action partnership, Project Umubano, working with lawyers in Rwanda.”
The project focused on five areas, with the justice pillar seeing 12 lawyers and volunteers including Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick run workshops in the Rwandan government’s ministry of justice and at a university.
Rwandan president Paul Kagame with Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell during a celebration for the 10th anniversary of Project Umubano, in Kigali, in August 2017— (Paul Kagame/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
An article written by Mr Mitchell at the time said they would cover the “English legal system and international treaties”.
Steve Smith MBE, chief executive of refugee charity Care4Calais, said that both the immigration minister and home secretary’s previous trips to Rwanda “raise serious questions about the government’s decision to continue pursuing their brutal, immoral and expensive policy”.
“The Court of Appeal ruling was clear – Rwanda is not a safe country to remove refugees to,” he added.
“Yet Ms Braverman and Mr Jenrick continue to assert that it is, offering no evidence other than the Rwandan government’s hollow assurances. People will rightly be wondering why they continue to pursue this policy, and why our government continues to squander millions of pounds of public money when it has been ruled unlawful.”
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, said: “Ministers like Robert Jennrick should be ashamed to own this unworkable, ineffective and expensive policy. What’s worst is his boss Suella Braverman seems intent on taking the Home Office to the brink trying to follow through with it.”
The Independent could not find any public record of Mr Jenrick discussing the trip, but Ms Braverman co-wrote an article under her maiden name Suella Fernandes in December 2008.
It said volunteer lawyers aimed to “regenerate Rwanda’s legal system” following the 1994 genocide, by working with the Kagame government’s ministry of justice and a state-funded law school.
The article suggested that Rwanda did not have a “properly functioning legal system”, and said there was an “almost total absence of what we as UK lawyers often take for granted”.
A source close to Mr Jenrick said: “The immigration minister visited Rwanda on a volunteering trip as a private citizen before he became an MP, helping to train lawyers at a Rwandan university.
“He would highly recommend other young people take opportunities to see the world and make a contribution whenever they can.”
His role in Project Umubano is not believed to have fallen under any disclosure requirement under the ministerial code.
Ms Braverman was a barrister and Conservative Party election candidate at the time of her involvement, and went on to co-found and direct a charity delivering training to Rwandan government lawyers.
She did not formally disclose five years of work with the Africa Justice Foundation to the Home Office but prime minister Rishi Sunak refused to trigger an inquiry after The Independent revealed the link in May.
Ms Braverman resigned from her post as director weeks before being elected as an MP, by which time Rwandan media reported that 19 alumni were serving in government institutions including the Office of the President, the Office of the Prime Minister and ministry of justice.
A spokesperson for the home secretary previously said she had not disclosed her involvement in the Africa Justice Foundation because it was not necessary, and that she did not make any submissions to colleagues on the country’s suitability for an asylum deal.
