Netherlands signs migration deal with Uganda amid growing European trend of externalization.

Photo by Daniel Omolewa on Unsplash.com

On September 25, 2025, the Netherlands and Uganda signed a Declaration of Intent, representing yet another problematic case of the externalization of migration management. Promoted by the extreme right-wing component of the Dutch political landscape (PVV), this scheme delegates the most critical phase of the asylum procedure, the coercive return of rejected international protection applicants, to a third State. This raises complex legal and humanitarian concerns.

The stated political justification, intended to circumvent the current ineffectiveness of European returns, directly conflicts with fundamental legal obligations, making the project’s sustainability highly questionable even before its planned launch in 2026. This move is widely seen as a desperate political stratagem initiated following the collapse of the previous government due to pressure from the far-right to curb immigration. The agreement is, therefore, a bargaining chip aimed at appeasing voter unrest, rather than a genuine solution to the low figures of actual returns (estimated at approximately one out of five).

The agreement formally excludes high-risk subjects such as unaccompanied minors, individuals with criminal records, and LGBTQ+ persons. This exclusion implicitly acknowledges the risks posed by Uganda’s restrictive human rights legislation, including the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, placing the agreement in a precarious position with respect to the principle of non-refoulement. This core principle of international refugee law, enshrined in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention and Article 3 of the ECHR, obliges states to avoid returning individuals to territories where their life, liberty, or safety could be threatened.

The judicial precedent set by the United Kingdom’s plan with Rwanda, which was blocked by the UK Supreme Court in 2023, illustrates the legal and ethical complexities involved. While Uganda has a long history of hosting refugees, transferring migrants there, even while acknowledging that vulnerable groups may not be fully protected, places the system under considerable strain and highlights the precarious balance between policy objectives and human rights obligations.

Furthermore, the prospect of forced administrative detention in this third country constitutes a significant vulnus to inalienable human rights. The transferred individuals, already in a position of extreme vulnerability, would be isolated in a context with which they hold no social, family, or legal ties. Crucially, this detention would operate outside the effective scrutiny of the procedural and judicial guarantees mandated by European standards, a practice that, as seen in the Italy-Albania protocol, quickly results in legal challenges regarding arbitrary detention and the failure to uphold EU asylum law. This lack of oversight transforms the coercive transfer into a penalty that violates human dignity and precludes genuine access to justice.

In conclusion, the Dutch plan solves nothing: it is merely a political stratagem that normalizes the idea that fundamental rights can be negotiated whenever domestic politics is in crisis. By excluding the most vulnerable while failing to address the hardest-to-remove cases, the initiative is guaranteed to be both ineffective and immoral. If Europe allows humanitarian protection to become a tool to calm public dissatisfaction, then the real crisis is not migratory, but ethical. It is on this point that the Netherlands, and the continent, should urgently reflect.

written by Silvia Cuccia