The Government's controversial Rwanda scheme – which the Supreme Court has ruled is unlawful – looks set to cost the UK more than £500 million, according to analysis by the National Audit Office.

The latest payment as part of the deal to resettle asylum seekers who come to the UK across the Channel in the African country could be as late as 2033, the NAO report states.

The Government has been refusing to reveal the overall cost of the plan. As a result, MPs sitting on the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee and Home Affairs Committee commissioned the NAO to produce its own report.

According to its findings, the economic partnership signed by the UK with Rwanda would see £330 million phased in as an initial payment. The aim would be Rwanda accepting 300 asylum seekers in exchange for money for the economic development of the country from the UK. 

Once 300 asylum seekers have been deported under the scheme, the Government is committed to giving Rwanda another £120 million and negotiating more deportations until 2028.

In addition, the Government would pay £20,000 per individual who is deported after the first 300 people are sent to Rwanda, and it would also pay a total of up to £150,874 per individual for processing and operational costs over five years. These payments would stop if the individual chooses to leave Rwanda and, in that event, the UK would pay £10,000 per person to help facilitate their departure.

Under the scheme this would mean that Rwanda would receive its last payment in 2033 for any asylum seekers deported in 2028.

The Home Office has paid Rwanda £220 million since April 2022.

It will pay further amounts of £50 million to the country in 2024 to 2025; £50 million in 2025 to 2026; and £50 million in 2026 to 2027.

The report also reveals how much the Home Office has so far spent on legal fees in the courts to defend the Rwanda scheme. 

This includes around £2 million in direct staff costs; £2.3 million in legal fees (excluding claimants’ costs); and £15.3 million in set-up costs for escorting people to Rwanda and providing training facilities. The Home Office estimates that escorting costs would total £23.5 million by the end of 2023 to 2024.

Further costs estimated by the Home Office include £1 million per year in staff costs from 2024 to 2025; £11,000 per relocated individual for flights (including chartering and fuel) to travel to Rwanda; and £12.6 million for training escorts in 2024 to 2025 and then £1 million per year in future fixed costs relating to escorting.

There would also be further costs of providing escorts to relocate individuals, with the amount depending on the number of flights required. 

One reason behind the huge costs involved in the scheme is that the UK would not be able to use a commercial airline to deport asylum seekers – as none are keen to handle them – and so the Government may have to use a private airport.

The auditors say that these figures are also an underestimate because they have not investigated the costs of the Illegal Migration Act on other Whitehall departments, in particular the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Unusually, the National Audit Office has not commented on whether the programme is value for money – despite a request from MPs to this effect.

The NAO says it cannot comment on this as its determination depends on whether the scheme acts as a deterrent to asylum seekers coming to the UK.

Labour's Dame Diana Johnson, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said: “These are staggering figures. For all its rhetoric about ensuring value for money in the asylum and immigration system, it is unclear how schemes such as Rwanda or Bibby Stockholm achieve that. Huge initial outlay and ongoing costs raise serious questions about how this can be cost-effective, even compared to high hotel accommodation costs.

“What we are left with is a very expensive programme the Government hopes may offer a deterrent to those seeking to cross the Channel in small boats. Yet, there is little evidence for this either. Unless the Government deals with the realities of the situation and focuses its energy and the public’s money on fixing the real issues in the asylum and immigration system, it will achieve nothing."

The Public Accounts Committee has announced it will launch an inquiry into the huge costs of the Rwanda scheme and the costs of providing accommodation for asylum seekers in the UK.

Labour's Dame Meg Hillier MP, the committee's chair, said: “Both our committee and the Home Affairs Committee have long called for a clear accounting of the likely costs of the UK-Rwanda partnership, as one of the Government’s most high-profile policies. We thank the National Audit Office for its service to the taxpayer in laying out the facts proceeding from its investigation.

“It is frustrating that proper transparency has been hindered by these figures not simply being made available to Parliament on request. Our new inquiry will both scrutinise the overall issue of asylum accommodation, as well as seek answers to the questions that now remain on the Rwanda scheme.

"Whether it’s value for money or not rests on whether the scheme achieves its aim of acting as a deterrent. The Home Office is on record in front of our committee that no evidence exists that it will do so.”

In Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences, Dirk-Jan Koch examines the unintended effects of development efforts, covering issues such as conflicts, migration, inequality and environmental degradation. Ruerd Ruben finds the book an original and detailed analysis that can help development policymakers and practitioners to better anticipate these consequences and build adaptive programmes.

Foreign Aid and Its Unintended Consequences. Dirk-Jan Koch. Routledge. 2023.

Find this book: 

Dirk-Jan Koch’s Foreign Aid and its Unintended Consequences offers a rich discussion on the unintended consequences of development efforts, including effects on conflicts, migration and inequality and changes in commodity prices, human behaviour, institutions and environmental degradation. The book explains how different perceptions of donors and recipients lead to quite opposite strategies (eg, for managing the Haiti earthquake), whereas in other settings aid programmes can even intensify local conflicts or spur deforestation.

Koch devotes due attention to the aggregate impact of development activities through so-called backlash effects, negative spillovers and positive ripple effects.

Koch devotes due attention to the aggregate impact of development activities through so-called backlash effects, negative spillovers and positive ripple effects. Many of these effects also occur in Western countries, where they are commonly labelled as crowding-in and -out, linkages and leakages, and substitution effects. Each chapter includes real-life examples (mostly cases from sub-Saharan Africa), ranging from due diligence legislation on conflict minerals in DR Congo to the experiences of the author’s parents with the Fairtrade shop in the tiny Dutch village of Achterveld.

Koch consistently argues that the analysis of unintended effects is helpful to unravel the complexities of development cooperation and enables better identification of incentives that allow for more adaptive planning. This is a welcome contribution, since it provides a common language for better communication between development agents.

Everyone involved in development programmes is invited by this book to reflect on their own experiences with unintended consequences. I still remember the shock when an external review of a large integrated rural development programme in Southern Nicaragua revealed that most funds were spent at the local gasoline station and car repair workshop for maintenance of the project vehicles. My original enthusiasm for Fairtrade certification of coffee and cocoa cooperatives was substantially reduced when I became aware that price support enabled farmers to maintain their income with less production and therefore increased inequality within rural communities.

Koch consistently shows that it is important and possible to disentangle each of these possible or likely side effects and to act to combat them.

The systematic overview of unintended consequences of foreign aid gives an initial impression that development cooperation is a system beyond repair. This is, however, far from the truth. Koch consistently shows that it is important and possible to disentangle each of these possible or likely side effects and to act to combat them. That requires an open mind and thorough knowledge of responses by different types of agents and institutions.

The analysis falls short, however, in showing that several types of unintended consequences are likely to interact (such as price and marginalisation effects, or conflict and migration effects). Other consequences may partially overlap or perhaps compensate for each other. Moreover, there is likely to be a certain ”hierarchy” in the underlying mechanisms, where behavioural effects, governance effects and price effects crowd out several other consequences. In addition, a further analysis of the development context and the influence of norms and values might be helpful to better understand why certain effects occur, or not.

There is likely to be a certain ‘hierarchy’ in the underlying mechanisms, where behavioural effects, governance effects and price effects crowd out several other consequences

Koch argues that unintended consequences are frequently overlooked due to “linear thinking” in international development. He probably refers to the dominance of logical frameworks in traditional development planning and the recent requirement for presenting a Theory of Change with different impact pathways for development programmes. Since links and feedback loops between activities are already widely acknowledged, Koch seems to merge “linearity” with “causality”. For responsible development policies and programmes, we need better insight into the cause-effect relationship, recognising that differentiated outcomes may occur and that side effects are likely to be registered.

The absence of linear response mechanisms has been part of development thinking since its foundation by development economist and Nobel-prize winner Jan Tinbergen. His work (and my PhD thesis) heavily relied on linear programming, which is still considered as an extremely useful approach for showing that an intervention can generate multiple outcomes and that policymakers need some insights into alternative scenarios before they start to act. Impact analysis through different (quantitative and qualitative) methods digs deeper into the adaptive behaviour of development agents in response to a wide variety of incentives (ranging from financial support and legal rules to knowledge diffusion and information exchange). Our attention should be focused on understanding how non-linearity as occasioned by the involvement of multiple agents with different interests (and power) in development programmes leads to multiple – and sometimes opposing – outcomes from interventions.

Our attention should be focused on understanding how non-linearity […] in development programmes leads to multiple – and sometimes opposing – outcomes from interventions.

Koch’s analysis is based on a wide variety of case studies and testimonies, enriched with secondary research on the gender effects of microfinance, the occurrence of exchange rate disturbances (Dutch Disease), and the effectiveness of incentives to encourage natural resource conservation (Payments for Ecosystem Services). In a few cases, it makes use of more systematic impact reviews made by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and Campbell Collaboration. Information about the size and relative importance of the unintended consequences is notably absent.

The reliance on illustrative case studies and dense description challenges the academic rigor of the book. It may hinder our understanding about the underlying causes and mechanisms behind these effects: are they generated by the development intervention themselves, or are they due to the context in which the programme is implemented, or the types of stakeholders involved in its implementation? A more comparative approach could be helpful to better understand, for instance, why microfinance was accompanied by an increase in domestic violence in certain parts of India, but not in others. Comparing different ways of designing and organising microfinance would provide clearer insights into the causes of variation in outcomes.

Opening up for such an interactive engagement with development activities asks for an institutional re-design of international development cooperation, permitting projects with a substantially longer duration (eight to ten years), closing the gap between policy and practice and accepting a political commitment for learning from mistakes. Moreover, dealing with unintended consequences requires that far more aid is channelled through embassies and local organisations that have direct insights into local possibilities and needs.

Social and community service programmes for basic education and primary healthcare tend to deliver the most tangible positive effects on incomes, nutrition, behaviour, women’s participation and income distribution.

Furthermore, focusing on adaptive planning and learning trajectories may also imply that policy priorities for foreign aid need to change. Social and community service programmes for basic education and primary healthcare tend to deliver the most tangible positive effects on incomes, nutrition, behaviour, women’s participation and income distribution. The development record of programmes for trade promotion is far more doubtful and still heavily relies on (unproven) trickle-down reasoning. Particular attention should be given to budget support and cash transfers as aid modalities with the least strings attached that show a high impact on critical poverty indicators. Contrary to these findings, several years ago the Dutch parliament stopped budget support and eliminated primary education as a key policy priority.

While the author concludes by focusing on the need to act on side effects and further professionalisation of international development programmes, more concrete leverage points could be identified. First, many of the registered effects tend to be related to cross-cutting structural differences in resources and voice, and therefore programmes that start with improving asset ownership and women’s empowerment are likely to yield simultaneous changes in different areas. Second, a stronger focus on systems analysis (beyond complexity theory) can be helpful to identify inherent conflicts and tensions in development programmes that could be the subject of political negotiation. Unravelling potential trade-offs then becomes a key component of development planning. Third, more space could have been devoted to the role of experiments in the practice of development cooperation. Policymakers expect a high level of certainty and face difficulties to become engaged in more adaptive programming. Accepting deliberate risk-taking may be helpful to improve aid effectiveness.

Policymakers expect a high level of certainty and face difficulties to become engaged in more adaptive programming. Accepting deliberate risk-taking may be helpful to improve aid effectiveness.

These reservations aside, Foreign Aid and its Unintended Consequences is a welcome and original contribution to the debate on development effectiveness. Koch offers a systematic conceptual and empirical analysis of ten types of unintended effects from international development activities, and its recommendations on how these effects can be tackled in practice will be useful for policymakers, practitioners and evaluators.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

Image Credit: Jen Watson on Shutterstock.

In When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West, David Keen considers how powers in the Global North exploit, or even manufacture, disasters in the Global South for political or economic gain. Though taking issue with Keen’s engagement with psychoanalysis, Daniele-Hadi Irandoost finds the book an insightful exploration of the global power dynamics involved in disasters and their far-reaching repercussions.

When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West. David Keen. Polity. 2023.

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In When Disasters Come Home: Making and Manipulating Emergencies In The West anthropological writer David Keen attempts to show how disasters are exploited for political and economic gain. A disaster, as defined by Keen, is “a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss”. Keen’s analysis deals with two types of disaster in the Global North. The so-called “sudden” or “dramatic” disasters are caused by stark terrorism (eg, the 9/11 attacks), natural causes (Hurricane Katrina), financial and economic recessions (crash of 2007–8), migration crises (Calais), Covid-19, and the war in Ukraine.

Keen attempts to show how disasters are exploited for political and economic gain.

On the other hand, “extended” or “underlying” disasters derive from long-smouldering conditions of economic disparity (eg, globalisation and inequality), considerable changes in climate (deficiencies in the domestic infrastructure), as well as political fragmentation (erosion of democratic norms, etc).

Colonial historiography assumed that disasters were usually confined to the Global South. Incidentally, in his investigative research in the Global South, especially in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Keen discovered that the politics of that world were disposed to deliberately make, manipulate and legitimise “famines, wars and other disasters”. This state of affairs enabled certain beneficiary actors to extract political, military and economic benefits.

In his investigative research in the Global South, especially in Sudan, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Keen discovered that the politics of that world were disposed to deliberately make, manipulate and legitimise famines, wars and other disasters

Here, Keen sounds a note of warning. Democracies provide only a fragile protection against disasters, and for six reasons (according to examples across the globe): disasters might be deemed “acceptable”, vulnerable groups do not always have the “political muscle” to guard against disasters, opportunists may seek to maximise profit through the suffering of certain groups, “elected politicians” may “distort” information about a disaster, democracies “may give false reassurance in terms of the apparent immunity to disaster” (emphasis in original), and, finally, a democracy may itself erode over time.

In theorising disasters, Keen endeavours to advance beyond the traditional distinction between the Global North and the Global South.

In theorising disasters, Keen endeavours to advance beyond the traditional distinction between the Global North and the Global South. His purpose is to show that, in the Western world, disasters have “come home to roost”, that the violence of “far away” countries (“whether in the contemporary era or as part of historical colonialism”) has found its way back into the Global North in the form of “various kinds of blowback”.

These “boomerang effects”, to use Keen’s words, “take a heavy toll on Western politics and society” when they are “incorporated into a renewed politics of intolerance” (“internal colonialism”). In particular, Keen says that, in the Global North, we find there is an increasing drive for security by “allocating additional resources for the military, building walls, and bolstering abusive governments that offer to cooperate in a ‘war on terror’ or in ‘migration control’ – … [which] tend not only to bypass the underlying problems but to exacerbate them” (emphasis in original). Additionally, Keen alleges that the expenses of “security systems” suck “the lifeblood from systems of public health and social security, which in turn feeds back into vulnerability to disaster”.

there is an increasing drive for security […which] tends not only to bypass the underlying problems but to exacerbate them

As Keen sees it, disasters either “hold the potential to awaken us to important underlying problems”, or “keep us in a state of distraction and morbid entertainment”, finding it important to consider their causes rather than their consequences.

Keen draws upon a wide selection of literature, covering authors including Naomi Klein, Mark Duffield, Giorgio Agamben, Ruben Andersson, Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze, as well as Michel Foucault, Susanne Jaspers, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Richard Hofstadter, and Nafeez Ahmed, among others. He pays particular attention to the work of Hannah Arendt. Her 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism is a powerful and permanently valuable account of the way in which politics is framed “as a choice between a ‘lesser evil’ and some allegedly more disastrous alternative”.

[Arendt’s] 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is a powerful and permanently valuable account of the way in which politics is framed ‘as a choice between a ‘lesser evil’ and some allegedly more disastrous alternative’.

Keen competently summarises her exposition of “action as propaganda,” upon which reality is prepared to conform to “delusions”. From his point of view, “action as propaganda” is represented by five distinct methods namely, “reproducing the enemy” (war on terror), “creating inhuman conditions” (police attacks in Calais), “blaming the victim” (austerity programmes in Greece), “undermining the idea of human rights” (the growing emphasis on removing citizenship in the UK), and “using success to ‘demonstrate’ righteousness” (Trump’s self-proclaimed powers of prediction).

Keen’s discussion of these strategies to exert control resonates with contemporary politics in the UK. One is reminded of the retrogressive character of Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s article for the Times on 8 November 2023, in the context of the Israel-Hamas war and the Armistice Day, suggesting that pro-Palestine protesters are “hate marchers”, and that the police operate with a “double standard” in the way they handle pro-Palestinian marches. This is, of course, one example of the insidious process of “painting dissent as extremism”.

Nevertheless, Keen’s use of “magical thinking”, or “the belief that particular events are causally connected, despite the absence of any plausible link between them”, is one aspect of his argument that struggles to convince. Keen is persuaded that “magical thinking” links up with a well-developed science of psychoanalysis in accordance with Sigmund Freud’s conception of the magical and how people affected by neurosis may turn away from the world of reality. But the impression given by Keen’s economic or anthropological perspective is that he may have overlooked the complexity of psychoanalysis.

Keen is persuaded that “magical thinking” links up with a well-developed science of psychoanalysis in accordance with Sigmund Freud’s conception of the magical and how people affected by neurosis may turn away from the world of reality

Here, we come to two of the chief problems of what “magical thinking” really means. First, according to Karl S. Rosengren and Jason A. French, magical thinking is “a pejorative label for thinking that differs either from that of educated adults in technologically advanced societies or the majority of society in general”. Second, they found, “it ignores the fact that thinking that appears irrational or illogical to an educated adult may be the result of lack of knowledge or experience in a particular domain or different types of knowledge or experience”. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the writings of Freud as the product of their locus nascendi. That is to say, it is dangerous to politicise the processes of psychology, or, to be more exact, to apply them outside the formalities of therapy.

To conclude, When Disasters Come Home is a book to which all those interested in current affairs, geopolitics and development studies must come sooner or later, abounding in illuminating extrapolations on the ruling and official class’s exploitation (or even manufacture) of disasters.

This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.

Image Credit: Kenneth Summers on Shutterstock.

Ethnic cleansing plans outed further but still ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media

Image: ActionAid

Israel is negotiating with Congo – it is unclear from reports which of the two neighbouring Congos – and other African nations to transfer the Palestinian people, according to reports in the Times of Israel and its sister site Zman Israel.

Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) regularly see serious human rights violations, including massacres. A 2022 US Department of State report on human rights in the Republic, which is commonly known as Congo Brazzaville after its capital city to distinguish it from its neighbour – states that:

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference

and more.

In the DRC, human rights groups have noted massacres and other human rights violations. Amnesty International said in 2022 that the DRC:

continued to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings in the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, a crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People from regions affected by armed conflict, including eastern DRC, were particularly affected amid mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis. The authorities continued to show a lack of political will to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The right to education was violated.

The Times quoted a ‘senior’ security cabinet source and comments by Israeli minister Gila Gamliel:

Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.

“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells [journalist] Shalom Yerushalmi.

Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”

The UK government has disgraced itself by continued attempts to transfer desperate refugees to Rwanda, attempts continually blocked by the courts – but the Israeli regime was the first to do it, sending around 4,000 Black refugees fleeing war in Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda between 2013 and 2018 before discontinuing what it called ‘voluntary’ departure – similar to the ‘voluntary emigration’ euphemism it uses for its ethnic cleansing plan, alongside ‘humanitarian migration’.

Israel has an appalling record toward Black people, even Black Jews – and last year threatened to deport them, too. The SAGE Race & Class Journal notes that:

Ethiopian Jews who have been brought into Israel in several mass transfer operations, have found themselves relegated to an underclass. They are not only racially discriminated against in housing, employment, education, the army and even in the practice of their religion, but have also been unwittingly used to bolster illegal settlements.

Now, as well as the already-outed plan to force huge numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza into the Egyptian desert, Israel is actively working on plans to force more out of the Middle East altogether and into Africa. The Israeli regime’s war crimes continue to pile up.

Despite the similarities with the UK’s racist government, at the time of writing the UK’s so-called ‘mainstream’ media have not reported Israel’s plan – as has been the case with much of Israel’s racism and criminality.

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