Shabana Mahmood has declined to rule out sending rejected Afghan asylum seekers back to a country that the United Nations recently described as a 'graveyard for human rights.' The home secretary told reporters in Dunkirk on Thursday that she's 'monitoring very closely' talks between Kabul and EU countries about a returns programme for refused claimants, and hinted at 'additional conversations' happening inside Whitehall.
If implemented, such a programme would reverse current UK policy - which prohibits returns because the UK doesn't recognise the Taliban-led government - and would presumably shock humanitarian groups, who might have assumed that deporting people to a place that enforces 'gender apartheid' using torture and corporal punishment wasn't on the table.
Mahmood's comments come after the Swedish government confirmed it facilitated talks between Kabul and Brussels over a returns deal expected within weeks. More than 20 EU countries are reportedly interested in beginning returns to Afghanistan, and Germany has already deported over 100 criminals back since 2024.
The UN report released last month painted a grim picture: women and girls over 11 are excluded from education and banned from most paid employment; women must cover themselves completely, travel with a male chaperone, and are not allowed to be heard speaking in public. Journalists have been arrested, tortured and murdered.
Meanwhile, the UK government is trying to drive down small boat crossings. Afghans were the most common nationality arriving by small boat in the year ending June 2025, with 6,360 arrivals - 18% higher than the previous year. Grant rates for Afghan asylum seekers have fallen sharply from 99% in 2023 to 38% in the first half of 2025, after a higher standard of proof was introduced in 2024.
Dr Madeleine Sumption of the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory noted that if a person has been refused asylum, the government has already judged they can live safely in their country of origin - though one might wonder how that squares with the UN's assessment. Keir Starmer has made halving violence against women and girls in the UK a central mission, which makes the prospect of sending women to a place where they can't walk in public parks or speak in public all the more eyebrow-raising.