UK extends travel bans as United Arab Emirates, Burundi and Rwanda added to red list to prevent spread of new variant

United Arab Emirates, Burundi and Rwanda added to travel ban.

 

entry to the UK is banned for visitors arriving from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Burundi and Rwanda from 29 January 2021 at 1pm – British, Irish and third-country nationals with residence rights in the UK will be allowed to enter

 

from 4am on Friday morning all arrivals who have, in the 10 days before their arrival in the UK, been in these destinations, and their households, will have to self-isolate immediately, and will not be eligible to use Test to Release

 

move is in response to new evidence showing the likely spread of a coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa

The government has today (28 January 2021) taken the urgent decision to ban travel to the UK from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Burundi and Rwanda to prevent the spread of the new variant originally identified in South Africa into the UK.

From 1pm on Friday 29 January, passengers who have been in or transited through the United Arab Emirates, Burundi and Rwanda in the last 10 days will no longer be granted access to the UK.

This does not include British and Irish nationals, or third-country nationals with residence rights in the UK, who will be able to enter the UK but are required to self-isolate for 10 days at home, along with their household. Passengers returning from these countries cannot be released from self-isolation through Test to Release.

There will also be a flight ban on direct passenger flights from the UAE.

The decision to ban travel from these destinations follows the discovery of a new coronavirus variant, first identified in South Africa, that may have spread to other countries, including the UAE, Burundi and Rwanda.

Any exemptions usually in place will not apply, including for business travel.

British nationals currently in the UAE should make use of the commercial options available if they wish to return to the UK. Indirect commercial routes that will enable British and Irish nationals and residents to return to the UK continue to operate.

British nationals should check Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) travel advice and follow local guidance. The FCDO will continue to offer tailored consular assistance to British nationals in country in need of advice on a 24/7 basis.

Today’s action follows new measures announced by the government yesterday to minimise travel across international borders and reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, including managed isolation in hotels and the need to declare a reason for travel. More details on these measures will be set out next week.

 

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UK increases efforts in tackling climate change in Kenya

The UK has launched a Climate Changemakers photography competition to spur Kenyan voices to share what climate change means to them.

The UK is stepping up to drive climate action in Kenya, British High Commissioner Jane Marriott announced today. During a visit to Lake Baringo, she reaffirmed that the UK is doubling its commitment to providing international climate finance by KES 1.7 trillion over the next 5 years.

During the visit, High Commissioner Jane Marriott met with businesses, schools and community leaders affected by the rise of Lake Baringo. The lake has risen by over 42 inches since May, impacting jobs, education and health services. The UK is committed to tackling climate change in Kenya, and the related issues that have driven the flooding.

As shown by Lake Baringo, the impacts of climate change are being felt all over Kenya, but these effects are felt the most by the communities directly impacted. Next year the UK will host the global climate change talks, and today Ms Marriott launched a new initiative inviting Kenyans to submit their photographs depicting how climate change is affecting the country.

Photographs can portray the very real challenges people face in Kenya. Winning photographs will cover the following categories: nature based solutions to climate change, climate technology and innovation, and adapting to climate change in the community.

Speaking on the shores of Lake Baringo, British High Commissioner to Kenya Jane Marriott said:

Climate change is already a daily reality for people across Kenya. Vulnerable communities that rely on their natural environment for survival are most at risk, least able to prepare and hardest hit. The UK will provide a platform for Kenyan voices and experiences in the run up to the climate change conference next year in the UK, to build a brighter, greener, future.

Vice President of the World Resources Institute and Friend of COP26 Wanjira Mathai said:

Without support to locally led measures to adapt to climate impacts and increase the resilience of economic activities, communities will sink further into poverty and hopelessness. The need for urgent climate action is clear. We need to re-set our relationship with nature and through our collective action reverse the damage we have done to mother earth.

The initiative comes during a Year of Climate Action in Kenya, a partnership to celebrate the leadership that Kenya has shown in areas such as climate policy, clean energy, and green finance.

Edouard Wenseleers, Globeleq’s Business Development Director for East Africa said:

Globeleq’s mission is to power Africa’s growth. As a responsible investor and power producer, Globeleq is committed to grow its business in a manner that is sustainable and respectful of the environment and the communities. Our Malindi Solar project in Kenya is a testimony of that commitment and we are delighted to sponsor the ‘Climate Changemakers Photography Competition’ launched by the British High Commission in Nairobi.

Last month, the UK announced a KES 1.2 billion (£8m) package of UK initiatives to support climate action in Kenya and Africa.

The UK is also backing new pioneering satellite projects that will apply British expertise to tackling development problems in Kenya. UK academics will work on data solutions to manage natural resources and protecting wildlife. In Kenya, these projects will protect biodiversity, and increase climate change resilience:

Sat4Wildlife - to protect wildlife habitats in Kenya, using innovative sensing and monitoring technologies to boost the capacity of conservationists, including Ol Pejeta Conservancy to tackle threats to people and wildlife.

gEOthermalKenya - working with Kenya’s National Environmental Management Authority to support the sustainable growth of the geothermal sector, through a combination of satellite data insights and community consultations

Earth Observation for Sustainable Aggregate Supply - supporting sustainable management of sand resources

The competition is open from Friday, 4 December 2020 and will close at midnight Sunday, 31 January 2021. Winners will be notified on Wangari Maathai Day on 3 March 2021

Notes to editors:

The photography competition, sponsored by Globeleq, will see up to three Kenyans win KES 200,000 each and a chance to visit and photograph the Globeleq Malindi Solar project once in operation

Winners will be selected by a panel comprising of the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Jane Marriott, the Principal Secretary Ministry of Environment and Forestry Dr. Chris Kiptoo, Vice President and Regional Director for Africa, World Resources Institute, Wanjira Mathai and a representative from the competition sponsor, Globeleq

The Terms and Conditions can be found here Terms and Conditions (ODT, 19.9KB)

The recent 1.2 billion KES package of UK support to tackle climate change in Africa includes:

The UK PACT Green Recovery Challenge Fund programme to Kenya and other countries with KES 770 million (£5.3m) available to support low-carbon transitions through clean energy and nature-based solutions;

A new UK funded partnership between Cambridge University, the Eastern & Southern African Management Institute, the International Institute for Environment and Development and FSD Africa to build capacity to access climate finance across Africa;

UK support to the FlipFlopi Project, in partnership with UNEP, to combat plastic waste and water pollution in Kenya and Lake Victoria, and work by BBC Media Action to train and mentor journalists to report on pollution issues and local solutions including recycling

 

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UK slashes aid budget, threatens Nigeria with sanctions

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is cutting development aid/John Sibley/Pool via AP

It has been a busy week for Her Majesty's Government. The UK is cutting the overseas aid budget, while parliamentarians have accused Nigerian leaders of corruption and inaction, and threatened sanctions, while also pointing a finger at the facilitating role the UK financial services industry has played in the looting.

Nigerian social networks were roiled on Monday by the accusations by a UK member of parliament against General Yakubu Gowon, the architect of peace after Nigeria’s brutal civil war.

“Some people would remember when General Gowon left Nigeria with half of the central bank, or so it was said, and moved to London”, said Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee representing Tonbridge and Malling.

MPs were debating the use of deadly force against #EndSARS protestors on 20th October by Nigerian security forces. The discussions was triggered by the signature of over 200,000 UK residents, and could result in targeted sanctions by the UK against those involved.

“The UK is in an almost unique position to actually do something against those who have robbed Nigeria”, says Tugendhat, because of the manner in which UK banks ‘sadly have been used’ to transfer illicit gains.

The infrastructure that facilitates corruption is well known to economic watchers of the continent. “It is estimated that between 1970 and 2010, the continent has lost up to $1.3 trillion through capital flight”, writes former African Development Bank (AfDB) chief economist Léonce Ndikumana in a paper on the ways in which wealth leaches out of the continent. Nigeria represented around a quarter of that, some $311bn, which represents 150% of its GDP from the period.

Aid budget slashed

By Tuesday, news of the impending cut to the UK’s overseas aid budget had leaked. On wednesday, it claimed the job of Baroness Sugg, a foreign officer minister who resigned, saying it was “fundamentally wrong to abandon our commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development”.

Other MPs framed it in more commercial and less ethical terms. The UK Defense committee Chair Tobias Elwood, for example, wondered how Brexit promises made about British influence after leaving could be kept, “when our hard power is not matched by soft power”.

On Wednesday, Gowon denied the allegations in a BBC interview, and by Thursday, Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s former minister of Agriculture and current President of the African Development Bank was pushing back against the idea Gowon was corrupt.

Be careful of misinformation! H.E. General Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s former Head of State, is a man of great honour, decency, honesty, amazing simplicity, humility and integrity. I know him. A great and admirable elder statesman of Nigeria. His honesty and integrity are impeccable. pic.twitter.com/YznYN873qH

— Akinwumi A. Adesina (@akin_adesina) November 26, 2020

Adesina has not publicly talked about the UK development aid cut.

But he did in January this year tell UK MPs, that, while Brexit may well be an opportunity to renew commercial ties between the UK and Africa, “the reality, however, is that UK’s trade with Africa is trending downwards. From a $49bn peak in 2012, trade decreased to $30.6bn in 2018”

 

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Sudanese asylum seeker flown back to UK after Khartoum gunfight delay

Man returned to Britain after ‘almost unprecedented’ U-turn by Home Office over his status

 A gun battle around the airport on Tuesday meant planes were not taking off and the man was forced to flee the airport. Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP

A Sudanese asylum seeker wrongly deported by the Home Office has been flown back to the UK after his departure from Khartoum was delayed by a gunfight.

The man’s lawyers described the highly unusual move by the Home Office as “almost unprecedented”.

The 48-year-old, who cannot be named because he continues to fear for his life, arrived at Heathrow on Thursday afternoon after a harrowing three-day journey interrupted by gunshots and fighting.

“I’m so happy the Home Office has brought me back. This is justice,” he said soon after his plane landed.

He was due to arrive in the UK the previous day but a gun battle around the airport in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, between Sudanese soldiers and former elite troops loyal to the ousted Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir on Tuesday, the day for which the Home Office had booked his flight, meant planes were not taking off and he was forced to flee the airport.

He managed to board a Turkish Airlines flight from Khartoum the following day and arrived in London on Thursday.

The man claims to be a non-Arab Darfuri – a group whose lives are at risk from the Sudanese regime. Home Office country guidance states that all non-Arab Darfuris who seek asylum in the UK should be granted refugee status.

The man says he is a member of one of a particular tribe of non-Arab Darfuris and had been tortured in his home country because of his ethnicity. He arrived in the UK and claimed asylum in May 2016, but the Home Office and the courts disputed evidence of his origins. After locking him up in immigration detention for 11 weeks, the Home Office forcibly removed him to Sudan in October 2018.

He was accompanied on the plane by four Home Office escorts and was interrogated by officials at the airport in Khartoum. After that he went into hiding, and was only able to make phone contact with his supporters and lawyers in the UK intermittently because of the risks attached to his calls being monitored and identifying his secret location.

Evidence of his ethnicity was provided to the Home Office when he made his asylum claim, but after his forced removal his lawyers commissioned a report from the leading authority on the man’s tribe.

The expert said he found the man to be one of the most fluent speakers of the language spoken by that tribe in the last 20 years. He added that the man speaks a rare dialect known only by members of that tribe.

The expert said the man had been persecuted by the Sudanese authorities and “remains at high risk of further persecution”.

The Home Office accepted that the new evidence amounted to a fresh asylum claim, conceded that the decision that led to his removal was unlawful and agreed to fly him back to the UK so that his case could be reconsidered.

The Home Office paid £608.40 for two Turkish Airlines flights – the first from Khartoum to Istanbul and the second from Istanbul to London.

The man said: “I had to spend one year and two months in hiding after the Home Office returned me to Sudan because it was too dangerous to go out. When I went to the airport in Khartoum hoping to board a flight and saw all the weapons flying around when the Sudanese soldiers and security intelligence officials were fighting each other I was very frightened and didn’t know if I would make it back to the UK.”

Sonja Miley, a co-executive director of the charity Waging Peace, which campaigns against human rights abuses in Sudan, welcomed the man’s return to the UK.

“It was very exciting and emotional to see him return,” she said: “It’s an amazing feeling to have him back here. We were in touch with him for about a year and a half in the UK before the Home Office removed him to Sudan and maintained contact when possible to do so, while he was in hiding in Sudan.”

The man’s solicitor, Jamie Bell, of Duncan Lewis, said: “The Home Office had clear evidence of this man’s ethnicity but chose to ignore it. It was with great joy that we welcomed him back to Heathrow yesterday. He and his supporters had fought a 14-month battle for his return since the dreadful mistake to remove him in October 2018.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK only ever returns those who both we and the courts are satisfied do not need our protection and have no legal basis to remain in the UK.”

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