Under the deal,Rwanda will be paid an initial £120 million ($209 million) to receive migrants who arrive illegally in Britain. The full details of the agreement have not been made publicly available.
The British government views the policy as crucial in deterring Channel crossings. More than 10,000 migrants have crossed already this year,a figure not reached in 2021 until August.
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The Commonwealth meeting is the first since Charles was named as the next head of the group in 2018. He and his wife Camilla,the Duchess of Cornwall,will become the first members of the royal family to visit Rwanda and will use their three-day tour to see a church where 10,000 Tutsis were massacred during the country’s genocide in 1994.
Charles has spoken out on a wide range of issues over the decades,particularly on the environment and climate.
In a reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014,he said:“And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.”
His remarks created a furore,with the Russian president saying the comparison of him to Hitler was “unacceptable” and “wrong”,adding:“This is not what monarchs do.”
In 2005,Prince Charles successfully sued a British newspaper after it published an extract from his private journals — written in 1997 when he attended the handover of Hong Kong to China — in which he called Chinese leaders “appalling old waxworks”.
A strong supporter of Tibet and its exiled spiritual leader,the Dalai Lama,he continued to express antipathy to the Beijing regime,boycotting banquets involving the Chinese in 1999 and 2005. He has more recently adopted a diplomatic stance towards China.
In a BBC documentary marking his 70th birthday in 2018,he said he would no longer make public interventions on such subjects once he was king,declaring:“I’m not that stupid.”
He told the program he would not be “able to do the same things I’ve done as heir” and as monarch he would have to operate within “constitutional parameters”.
As head of state,the Queen has to remain strictly neutral regarding political matters. By convention,she does not vote but does have ceremonial and formal roles relating to the government of the United Kingdom.
The Rwanda offshore detention issue is one of the most politically sensitive debates in the United Kingdom. A High Court challenge of the new policy was defeated last week.Credit:AP
Vernon Bogdanor,professor of government at King’s College,London,told the paper that the prince was in a different position from the Queen and while criticising a policy position in private was not problematic,he must not do or say anything involving party politics.
“The only constraint is that he must not say anything which would embarrass the Queen,” Bogdanor toldThe Times.