BID’s Rwanda Project Wins Best Use of Law at Sheila McKechnie Foundation Awards
We’ve been awarded SMK’s Best Use of Law Award for our work challenging the mass detention of people facing removal to Rwanda
We are proud to share that Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) has won the Best Use of Law category at the 2025 Sheila McKechnie Foundation National Campaigner Awards, in recognition of our Rwanda Project challenging the UK government’s inhumane deportation policy.
The awards celebrate campaigners across the UK who are using their voices and their work to create meaningful social change. The Best Use of Law category recognises strategic legal action that directly challenges injustice. To have our work acknowledged in this way is affirming and energising.
Our Rwanda Project was launched in direct response to the government’s policy to forcibly remove people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda. Since its inception, our team has worked through legal casework, litigation, and public advocacy to stop individual removals, support people in detention, and challenge the legality of the policy itself.
This work secured the release of people from detention, prevented forced deportations, and helped expose the cruelty and injustice at the heart of the scheme. Many of those we supported through the project have since been granted asylum — a powerful reminder of how fundamentally unjust the policy was.
While we are grateful to receive this award, there should never have been a need for this project. The Rwanda policy was performative, cruel, and inhumane by design. But the response to it showed that when we work together, we can stop injustice.
The policy was completely out of step with public feeling. Across the UK, people were welcoming refugees and outraged by the government’s plans. We knew people would want to stand with those affected. Through crowdfunding for interpreter fees and working alongside pro bono lawyers and partner organisations, our project became part of a wider ecosystem of campaigners, lawyers, and organisers who, together, built the resistance that stalled the Rwanda plan until it was ultimately scrapped.
This award reflects the collective effort behind that success. We are deeply grateful to our partner firms — A&O Shearman (formerly Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling), Herbert Smith Freehills, Reed Smith, and Simmons & Simmons — for their ongoing support. We also extend special thanks to the many pro bono lawyers who work alongside us with unwavering dedication to justice.
Finally, we thank the Sheila McKechnie Foundation for this recognition and for bringing together so many campaigners in an evening of solidarity. It was inspiring to stand among those fighting for dignity, fairness, and accountability — and a reminder that, no matter the scale of the challenge, we are never alone in this work.
