BREAKING: UK indicators main border pact with Iraq to smash smuggler gangs behind small boats disaster

Britain has signed a border pact with Iraq to smash the people smuggling gangs driving the small boats crisis.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper travelled to Baghdad this week to agree a deal to cooperate on border security and tackling criminal gangs with the Iraqi government and the regional Kurdistan government in Erbil. It aims to stem the flow of would-be asylum seekers to Britain from the region, where major smuggling networks operate.

Under the plans, the UK will pay up to £300,000 for Iraqi law enforcement training to beef up border security with a focus on tackling organised immigration crime and drugs. There will be a further £300,000 to strengthen Iraq’s domestic capacity to disrupt smuggling operations. The UK will also hand £200,000 to the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north of the country.

The Home Office said Iraq had agreed to step up its cooperation to take back people who arrive in Britain via illegal routes – known as returns – and help them reintegrate into society. Iraqis made up the second largest group of small boat arrivals in the year to June 2024, with 13% (3,844) of arrivals, behind 18% (5,370) from Afghanistan. But the UK Government has struggled to return people to Iraq.

Ms Cooper said: “The work to stop smuggler gangs doesn’t start on the French coast. We have to work upstream with other governments, with other law enforcement.”

It follows a similar strategy by the hard-right Italian government to stop would-be arrivals from Libya and Tunisia, which has been criticised by human rights groups. The Government’s most recent assessment of Iraq noted that religious minority groups can suffer “discrimination and mistreatment” from state authorities and other groups.

“Examples of discrimination and mistreatment include lack of legal recognition, difficulties accessing documentation, dispossession, restrictions on movement, extortion, threats, harassment (including sexual harassment), violence, detention, and murder,” it said.

Asked about concerns on Iraq’s human rights record, she said: “We have been very clear and explicit in the statements that have been agreed that there is a commitment to international law, a commitment to international humanitarian law and commitments to human rights standards.”

Ms Cooper said: “There are smuggler gangs profiting from dangerous small boat crossings whose operations stretch back through Northern France, Germany, across Europe, to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and beyond. Organised criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too.

“The increasingly global nature of organised immigration crime means that even countries that are thousands of miles apart must work more closely together than ever to stop these gangs getting away with it, to strengthen our border security and to stop so many lives being put at risk.”

There will also be UK-funded social media campaigns to bust myths perpetuated by smugglers to get desperate people to pay them thousands of pounds to go to the UK. The Home Office has deployed this tactic in Vietnam and Albania, featuring stories from people explaining the reality of the perilous journey.