Maung Sawyeddollah, Founder of the Rohingya Students Network, addresses the high-level conference of the General Assembly on the situation of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2025 (IPS)

The international community convened for a high-level meeting at UN Headquarters, this time to mobilize political support for the ongoing issue of the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar.

On Tuesday September 30, representatives from Rohingya advocacy groups, the UN system and member states convened at the General Assembly to address the ongoing challenges facing Rohingya Muslims and the broader context of the political and humanitarian situation in Myanmar.

UN President of the General Assembly Annalena Baerbock remarked that the conference was an opportunity to listen to stakeholders, notably civil society representatives with experience on the ground.

“Rohingya need the support of the international community, not just in words but in action,” she said.

Baerbock added there was an “urgent need for strengthened international solidarity and increased support,” and to make efforts to reach a political solution with unequivocal participation from the Rohingyas.

“The violence, the extreme deprivation and the massive violations of human rights have fueled a crisis of grave international concern. The international community must honor its responsibilities and act. We stand in solidarity with the Rohingya and all the people of Myanmar in their hour of greatest need,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the eight years since over 750,000 Rohingyas fled persecution and crossed the border into Bangladesh, the international community has had to deal with one of the most intense refugee situations in living memory. Attendees at the conference spoke on addressing the root causes that led to this protracted crisis—systematic oppression and persecution at the hands of Myanmar’s authorities and unrest in Rakhine State.

Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser of the interim Government of Bangladesh, addresses the high-level conference on the situation of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

The military junta’s ascension in 2021 has only led to further unrest and instability in Myanmar and has made the likelihood of safe and sustained return far more precarious. Their persecution has only intensified as the Rohingya communities still residing in Rakhine find themselves caught in the middle of conflicts between the junta and other militant groups, including the Arakan Army.

At the opening of the conference, Rohingya refugee activists remarked that the systemic oppression predates the current crisis. “This is a historic occasion for Myanmar. But it is long overdue. Our people have suffered enough. For ethnic minorities—from Kachin to Rohingya—the suffering has spanned decades,” said Wai Wai Nu, founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network.

“It has already been more than eight years since the Rohingya Genocide was exposed. Where is the justice for the Rohingyas?” asked Maung Sawyeddollah, founder of the Rohingya Student Network.

For the United Nations, the Rohingya refugee crisis represents the dramatic impact of funding shortfalls on their humanitarian operations. UN Secretary-General António Guterres once said during his visit to the refugee camps in Bangladesh back in April that “Cox’s Bazar is Ground Zero for the impact of budget cuts”.

Funding cuts to agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) have undermined their capacity to reach people in need. WFP has warned that their food assistance in the refugee camps will run out in two months unless they receive more funding. Yet as of now, the 2025 Rohingya Refugee Response Plan of USD 934.5 million is only funded at 38 percent.

Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, addresses the high-level conference of the General Assembly on the situation of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

“The humanitarian response in Bangladesh remains chronically underfunded, including in key areas like food and cooking fuel. The prospects for funding next year are grim. Unless further resources are forthcoming, despite the needs, we will be forced to make more cuts while striving to minimize the risk of losing lives: children dying of malnutrition or people dying at sea as more refugees embark on dangerous boat journeys,” said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

As the host country of over 1 million refugees since 2017, Bangladesh has borne the brunt of the situation. Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus said that the country faces its own development challenges and systemic issues with crime, poverty and unemployment, and has struggled to support the refugee population even with the help of aid organizations. He made a call to pursue repatriations, the strategy to ensure the safe return of Rohingyas to Rakhine.

“As funding declines, the only peaceful option is to begin their repatriation. This will entail far fewer resources than continuing their international protection. The Rohingya have consistently pronounced their desire to go back home,” said Yunus. “The world cannot keep the Rohingya waiting any longer from returning home.”

Along with the UN, Myanmar and Bangladesh, neighboring and host countries also have a role to play. Regional blocs like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are also crucial  in supporting the Rohingya population as well as leading dialogues with other stakeholders across the region.

“In my engagements with Myanmar stakeholders, I have emphasized that peace in Myanmar will remain elusive until inclusive dialogue between all Myanmar stakeholders takes place,” said Othman Hashim, the special envoy of the ASEAN Chair on Myanmar. “For actions within Myanmar, the crucial first step is stopping the hostilities and violence. Prolonged violence will only exacerbate the misery of the people of Myanmar, Rohingya and other minorities included.”

“Countries hosting refugees need sustained support. Cooperation with UNODC [UN Office of Drugs and Crime], UNHCR, and IOM [International Organization for Migration] must be deepened,” said Sugiono, Indonesia’s foreign minister.

Supporting the Rohingya beyond emergency and humanitarian needs would also require investing resources in education and employment opportunities. Involved parties were encouraged to support resettlement policies that would help communities secure livelihoods in  the long-term, or to extend opportunities for longterm work, like in Thailand where they recently granted long-staying refugees the right to work legally in the country.

“Any initiative for the Rohingya without Rohingya in the camp, from decision making to nation-building is unsustainable and unjust. The UN must mobilize resources to empower Rohingya. We are not only victims; we have the potential to make a difference,” said Sawyeddollah.

As one of the few Rohingya representatives present that had previous lived in the camps in Cox’s Bazaar, Sawyeddollah described the challenges he faced in pursuing higher education when he applied to over 150 universities worldwide but did not get into any of them. He got into New York University with a scholarship, the first Rohingya refugee to attend. He reiterated that universities had the capacity to offer scholarships to Rohingya students, citing the example of the Asian University of Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where it has been offering scholarships to Rohingya girls since at least 2018.

The conference called for actionable measures that would address several key areas in the Rohingya refugee situation. This includes scaling up funding for humanitarian aid in Bangladesh and Myanmar, and notably, pursuing justice and accountability under international law. Türk and other UN officials reiterated that resolving the instability and political tensions in Myanmar is crucial to resolving the refugee crisis.

Kyaw Moe Tun, Permanent Representative of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar to the UN, blamed the military junta for the country’s current state and called for member states to refuse supporting the junta politically or financially. “We can yield results only by acting together to end the military dictatorship, its unlawful coup, and its culture of impunity. At a time when human rights, justice and humanity are under critical attack, please help in our genuine endeavour to build a federal democratic union that rooted in these very principles.”
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Ugochi Daniels, the Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), speaks to IPS Senior Journalist Joyce Chimbi. Credit: IOM

By Joyce Chimbi
BAKU, Nov 20 2024 (IPS)

Migration is growing as the planet gets even hotter. Climate change is fuelling a migration crisis and millions of people in vulnerable nations are continually being uprooted from their homes. The climate and migration nexus are undeniable and the global community has turned to the Baku climate talks for urgent and sustainable solutions.

Ugochi Daniels, the Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) spoke to IPS about displacement of people due to the impact of climate change and its different dimensions, such as disaster displacement, labor mobility, as well as planned relocation. She also talked about the magnitude of this pressing problem, as nearly 26 million people were displaced due to the impact of climate change in the last year alone.

“This impact is destroying people’s livelihoods. The farms they used to farm are no longer viable and the land can no longer sustain their livestock. So, people then move, looking for job opportunities elsewhere. Then there is planned relocation, which IOM supports governments to do. When governments know certain communities can no longer adapt as the impact of climate is so great that they are going to have to move, rather than waiting for the climate impact to happen to move and probably not in as organized a way as possible, governments plan for it. That is what we refer to as planned relocation,” she explains.

Ugochi Daniels, the Deputy Director General for Operations at the International Organization for Migration at COP29. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Stressing that climate migration is on track to be an even bigger global crises, with World Bank estimates showing that “216 million people will be displaced due to the impact of climate by 2050 and that they will be displaced within their countries. Nearly a billion people are living in highly climate-vulnerable areas. Trends are showing that when people are displaced, it is often due to a mix of many factors. So, if a community is hit by an extreme weather event, and at the same time the necessary investments were not made, there is no way for the community to absorb the shock of the extreme weather event.”

Daniels notes that with progressive COPs, each year is also becoming the hottest in recorded history and there are more disasters such as heat waves, droughts, floods and hurricanes. Saying that these issues are increasingly becoming a lived reality for even more people. Further referencing the recent flooding in Spain, in addition to all the disasters unfolding in the developing countries. In turn, this is increasing awareness of the impact of climate change on people.

“Of the estimated 216 million people moving by 2050, nearly half of them are in Africa—86 million in sub-Saharan Africa and 19 million in North Africa. Africa is highly vulnerable amid all the other development issues that the continent is dealing with. And we know that, looking at Africa alone, water stress will affect 700 million people by 2030. The reality is that we are experiencing the impact of climate. We had unprecedented flooding in Nigeria this year and it is not just Nigeria—there is Chad and the Central African Republic and the Eastern Horn of Africa has faced similar events in recent times, and we have the El Niño and La Niña in Southern Africa,” she explains. 

Daniels says they are encouraged and satisfied because human mobility is integrated into submissions for the Global Goal on Adaptation and that they are unified around this issue. There is also the Kampala Declaration on Migration, Environment and Climate Change, which has already been signed by over 40 countries in Africa and the regional groups in the Pacific Island States and the islands have all prioritized the issue as it is their lived reality.

“As IOM, our presence at COP is in supporting member states in raising visibility and awareness on the link between climate change and migration and displacement. Having said that, within the negotiations, and we are still waiting to see what comes out, we hope that this continues. We count on member states in making sure that the impact on vulnerable communities is recognized, that vulnerable communities are prioritized for climate financing, and that migration is factored in as a positive coping strategy for adaptation,” Daniels observes.

She emphasises that “when we talk about displacement, we also have to recognize that as things stand, migrants, through formal and informal means, remit a trillion dollars a year. And a lot of that is going to developing and middle-income countries. And when I met with the diaspora at COP last year, they said to me, ‘We are financing loss and damage now.’ We have seen that remittances have stayed resilient since COVID-19 and continue to go up. So here at COP, it is not just recognition of climate change and human mobility, which has been in the covered decision at least for the last three COPs. But it is also about integrating this into the different instruments and mechanisms, whether it is financing or in the indicators.”

Further speaking to the issue of the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund. Saying that whereas there are 64 funds globally specific on climate, the Loss and Damage Fund is the only one that has a window specific for vulnerable communities. As member states continue their negotiations, IOM is looking forward to solutions that, for instance, improve access to climate finance, ensuring that in the new financing path, the loss and damage fund supports vulnerable communities to adapt or migrate safely. Emphasising the need for regional cooperation to manage climate-related migration and how climate migration features in the national adaptation plans.

“Importantly, vulnerable communities. need to be part of the solutions. They need to be at the table where these decisions are being made. IOM is one of the—it is actually the only UN organization—that is one of the representative agencies supporting the Loss and Damage Fund and implementation of the fund. Our top priority is the engagement and participation of those most affected so that they have a voice at the table. Well-managed migration is a very effective adaptation strategy. Human civilization has been shaped by migration and this will continue. Climate and other factors will continue to trigger movement,” Daniels says.

“We have the tools. We know what the solutions are. There is the global compact on migration, which is how countries have agreed they will cooperate for better migration management and better migration governance. So, because we know migration has shaped our history and that it will shape our future, we have no excuse for not ensuring that it is safe, dignified, and regular. Whatever we do not do, the traffickers and smugglers will do.”

Stressing that in the process, there will be more people dying, “We will have increased vulnerabilities, and the business model and the industry of trafficking will just continue to grow. So, the urgency for climate action is here and now and there is really no excuse for why we are not collectively working on this. The evidence is there. The solutions are there. The agreements are there too. So, we are here at COP to do our best to ensure it happens.”

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People queue outside a bank where they access diaspora remittances in Bulawayo. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Jul 24 2024 (IPS)

As the African diaspora continues its growth, agencies are seeking ways to tap into this vast demographic to help with the continent’s development.

Remittances from millions of Africans scattered across the globe have been hailed for sustaining local economies, but a new initiative is aiming to form upscale diaspora investments for longer-term economic development.

In June 2024, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) partnered with the African Development Bank and the African Union Commission (AUC) towards the implementation of a USD5.2 million project. 

According to officials, the fund aimed at eight African countries will “strengthen investment, human capital and philanthropic engagement from the diaspora in eight African countries.”

Most diaspora remittances in Africa go directly to beneficiary families to support anything from buying food to school fees.

The Streamlining Diaspora Engagement to Catalyze Private Investments and Entrepreneurship for Enhanced Resilience’’ (SDE4R) project will help The Gambia, Liberia, Madagascar, Mail, Somalia, South Sudan, Togo and Zimbabwe identify the best methods for effectively mobilizing the human and financial capital of the diaspora.

This follows the signing of a protocol agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December 2023.

The project will “support socioeconomic development by reviving the domestic private sector or recovery from political or humanitarian crises by leveraging the expertise and networks of Diaspora groups,” according to the IOM.

The fund will go towards supporting socioeconomic development by reviving the domestic private sector and recovering from political and humanitarian crises by leveraging the expertise and networks of diaspora groups.

“The African diaspora, with its vast resources, skills, and networks, holds an unparalleled capacity to drive economic growth, innovation, and resilience in our home countries,” said Lamin Drammeh, a manager at the African Development Bank financial intermediation and inclusion division.

“This multi-country intervention will contribute towards strengthening private sector development, which will foster economic growth as well as socioeconomic resilience in the beneficiary countries,” Drammeh said.

The initiative will also enhance “business development by leveraging diaspora-oriented financing opportunities and tools and entrepreneurship initiatives,” Drammeh added.

The African diaspora has been hailed by the continent’s governments for driving human development through annual multi-billion dollar remittances, but with little formalized investment.

The IOM’s partnership with the AU and the AfDB seeks to change that.

“Acknowledging the important role diasporas play in their countries of origin, several governments in Africa have developed policies that seek to harness the potential of their diaspora in national development through financial and social remittances,” said Mariama Cisse Mohamed, Director of the IOM Special Liaison Office in Addis Ababa.

“However, there are persistent challenges, including governments’ constraints on data collection among diaspora to facilitate meaningful engagement, limited dialogue between African governments and diaspora and the high transfer costs associated with remittance transfers,” Mohamed said.

With an ever-increasing number of African migrants making perilous journeys to developed countries seeking better economic opportunities, agencies are calling for the formalization of the continent’s development agenda with the Diaspora.

The multi-million-dollar SDE4R project is expected to address the needs of Africa’s most vulnerable populations, with the incentives also expected to stem the dangerous and usually illegal journeys African migrants continue making.

“It is further expected to contribute to reinforcing socioeconomic resilience of vulnerable populations, particularly women, youth, rural dwellers and forcibly displaced populations,” said Angela Naa Afoley, Head of Division of the African Union Commission’s Citizens and Diaspora Organization Directorate.

This will include assistance “through diaspora-related humanitarian, educational, health and other resilience-building support and the temporary return of skilled and qualified diaspora members,” Afoley said.

“By streamlining processes, reducing barriers, and providing strategic support, the SDE4R project will unlock new opportunities for investment, spur entrepreneurial ventures, and ultimately enhance the resilience of communities, nations and the continent,” Afoley added.

According to the IOM, the USD5 million project is expected to have 10,000 direct beneficiaries and 40,000 indirect beneficiaries in communities affected by conflict, climate change and other humanitarian and environmental disasters.

The IOM is implementing the project over three years with strategic oversight, guidance and advisory from the African Union Commission.

The initiative is part of the IOM’s Humanitarian Development and Peace (HDP) program, which focuses on the implementation of strategic frameworks and shared priorities among humanitarian agencies.

According to agencies, an estimated 160 million Africans are in the diaspora, remitting USD96 billion in 2021, more than double the USD35 billion recorded in official development assistance that flowed into Africa in the same year.

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A Pakistani child domestic worker in this dated photo. The Asia Pacific region has one of the highest number of people in modern slavery, but the growing awareness of modern slavery in the region has led to the implementation of legislations to combat it.Credit: Fahim Siddiqi /IPS

By Neena Bhandari
SYDNEY, Australia, May 15 2020 (IPS)

Aged 17, Moe Turaga was saddled with the responsibility of providing for his mother and young siblings when a family member approached him with the promise of a job and education in Australia. Dreaming of a bright future for himself and his family, he seized the opportunity and left the protective confines of his home in Fiji, only to find himself trapped in modern slavery on a remote agriculture farm in the state of Victoria.

Turaga was one of 12 cousins, forced to work long hours in abysmal conditions. He told IPS, “We had implicit faith in this man as he was family and a church minister. We kept loyal for years because we were told that our wages were being used to feed our family and send our siblings to school. It was 1988, we didn’t have mobiles or access to social media. All our identity documents had been confiscated by this man so we were completely isolated.”

He learnt that none of his wages had been sent home after two years of forced labour. Eventually, a farmer employed him and helped him escape. “This gut-wrenching experience of being exploited to the hilt will always be a part of my life. I want to encourage more people to tell their stories, so somebody can see the light and be freed. I am now an advocate for modern slavery, which is rife in Australia,” said Turaga from his home in central Queensland, where he now lives with his family.

Moe Turaga found himself trapped in modern slavery on a remote agriculture farm in the state of Victoria, Australia at the age of 17. Courtesy: Moe Turaga

Joint research by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Walk Free Foundation, and the International Organisation for Migration shows that more than 40 million people around the world were victims of modern slavery in 2016, out of which 24.9 million were in forced labour.

In Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island countries, new research has revealed alarming evidence of modern slavery fuelled by widespread poverty, migration, weak governance, and the abuse of cultural practices.

“These vulnerabilities are likely to increase as climate change exacerbates poverty and migration. Sectors most at-risk of modern slavery include logging, fishing, agriculture, horticulture, meat packing, construction, domestic work, cleaning and hospitality, and the sex industry,” Walk Free’s Senior Research Analyst, Elise Gordon, told IPS.

On any given day in 2016, 15,000 people in Australia and 3,000 people in New Zealand were in situations of modern slavery, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, Walk Free’s flagship dataset which is the only country-by-country estimate of the extent and risk of global slavery.

Australia is primarily a destination country for people trafficking and modern slavery. “Traditionally, Australia has offered higher minimum wages and greater employment opportunities than some other countries in the Asia-Pacific so there is a sense that there is greater opportunity to make a living here,” Justine Nolan, Professor in the Faculty of Law at University of New South Wales in Sydney, told IPS.

“Modern slavery may take the form of forced labour – where workers have paid high recruitment fees for the job, or they may be forced to work excess hours, be underpaid or not paid for that work,” Nolan added.

In most cases, the trafficked people know their trafficker and the latter is able to exploit their trust to deceive them. Ashish Kumar, who hails from the poor Manjhi community in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, was 14 years old when an agent from a nearby village approached him and six other boys, aged between 10 and 14 years, with an offer of a good job and schooling in a city. The agent paid 2000 Rupees (about $26) to each boy’s parent. He brought them to Jaipur in Rajasthan and locked them in a small room with six other children, who were already there.

“For six months, 13 of us lived and worked from early morning till midnight in that room. The windows and doors were shut at all times and we were allowed only short toilet breaks and given limited food twice a day. We were made to grind glass stones and then stick the stone embellishments and beads on lac bangles. The dust from stone grinding made it difficult to breathe and we are still suffering from respiratory illnesses,” Ashish told IPS via Whats App from Samod Bigha village in Gaya district.

Ashish Kumar, who hails from the poor Manjhi community in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, was 14 years old when an agent from a nearby village approached him and six other boys, aged between 10 and 14 years, with an offer of a good job and schooling in a city. It turned out to be modern slavery. Courtesy: Ashish Kumar

“If we protested or asked to go home, we were thrashed and threatened with death. One day the trafficker sent one of his village boys, whom he trusted, to buy ration. The boy instead went to the nearby police station and complained. The cops raided our room and rescued us,” added Ashish, who is amongst a small number of children who are fortunate to be freed from bonded labour.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery and child labour.

The ILO estimates that about 152 million children, aged between 5 and 17, were subject to child labour in 2016, out of which 62 million were in Asia and the Pacific. According to 2011 Census data, there are over 8.2 million child labourers (aged between 5 – 14 years) in India. 

Ashish’s trafficker was last year awarded life imprisonment for exploiting child labour in a landmark judgment by a Jaipur court. The boys still have nightmares and fear for their safety as only three months ago, their families were threatened by the trafficker’s extended family, demanding that the boys change their testimony in court.

These boys are being supported and rehabilitated by The Freedom Fund, a global charity dedicated to end trafficking. The fund, along with its grassroots partner Centre DIRECT, has helped set up the Vijeta Survivors Group of rescued children in Bihar, one of the collectives in the Indian Leaders Forum against Trafficking (ILFAT).

Ashish, who is the leader of the group which currently has 50 survivors told IPS, “We are very concerned about children still being exploited in workshops. Their misery has been compounded by the COVID-19 lockdown.”

The Asia Pacific region has one of the highest number of people in modern slavery, but the growing awareness of this practise in the region has led to the implementation of legislations to combat it. For example, Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018 requires entities based, or operating, in Australia, which have an annual consolidated revenue of more than AU$100 million, to report annually on the risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains, and actions taken to address those risks.

As Executive Manager of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney’s Anti-Slavery Taskforce, Jenny Stanger told IPS, “The supply chains of Australian businesses are spread across the Asia Pacific region. So Australia has an opportunity here to be a leader in advocating for and bringing visibility to workers’ rights in the region, where workers’ rights and justice for workers is a real challenge, and to drive the human rights agenda through business. This includes improving rights and access to justice for migrant workers right here in Australia.”

The new Australian Catholic Anti-Slavery Network (ACAN) is a collaboration of 45 large Catholic health, education, financial and community service entities implementing a Modern Slavery Risk Management Programme within the supply chains and operations of their organisations.  

“In Australia, Temporary Visa holders and undocumented people are the most vulnerable. Fruit picking and packing are jobs that many Australians don’t want to do. Those jobs are in rural, regional and remote areas and it is really hard work.

“Most farmers are reliant on temporary and seasonal labour to get their products to the market. There are 60,000 to 100,000 people in agriculture alone, who don’t have permission to be in Australia or those whose visa has expired are very much at risk of exploitation or becoming trapped in slavery like conditions,” Stanger added.

Modern slavery is a lucrative business, generating more than $150 billion a year, according to ILO. Legislation alone is no silver bullet. Research shows significant legal loopholes and gaps in enforcement remain. Technology, such as Apps, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain, is coming to the aid in combatting human trafficking and modern day slavery.

“The gathering of global data can help authorities to identify causes and patterns. As many as 147 nations having agreed to map practices and count the victims of modern slavery. Even satellite images can be used to identify modern slavery hotspots in industries, such as brick kilns, illegal mining and fish processing.

“The World Wildlife Fund is working with technology partners and a tuna fishing company to use blockchain technology to track tuna from “bait to plate”. Digital tools, including SMS and social media can be used to better engage workers in supply chains and enable them to provide anonymous input on their working conditions,” Nolan told IPS.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, just doesn’t have the financial resources to combat human trafficking. With 50 percent of this country’s 18 million people living below the poverty line, many are susceptible to the crime of trafficking. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charity Chimungu Phiri
BLANTYRE, Malawi , May 13 2020 (IPS)

Malawi is not doing enough to enforce its laws on human trafficking, resulting in a number of cases against perpetrators being dismissed by the courts, according to a local rights group. But local officials say that this Southern African nation — one of the poorest countries in the world — just doesn’t have the financial resources to do so.

• The 2015 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Act criminalises sex and labour trafficking, with up to 14 years imprisonment for offences involving an adult victim, and up to 21 years imprisonment for offences involving a child.
•  The TIP Act mandated the creation of a Trafficking in Persons Fund (TIPF), to financially support victims with aid, counselling and seeking justice.
•  In addition, Malawi has set up a National Coordination Committee Against Trafficking in Persons (NCCATIP) and developed a National Plan of Action Against Trafficking in Persons (2017-2022).

No funds to help trafficking victims

Caleb Thole, the national coordinator of the Malawi Network Against Trafficking (MNAT), a coalition of NGOs, told IPS that they are concerned that the TIPF was empty and not enough assistance was being given to victims.

“When we’re rescuing victims they need to be fed, transported and kept in a shelter, but there are literally no funds in the TIPF, the government cannot show you any…there aren’t even shelter homes to provide safety for victims,” he said.

However, senior deputy secretary for Homeland Security and the national coordinator for NCCATIP, Patricia Liabuba, told IPS that government funding to TIPF has increased, but acknowledged there were financial shortfalls.

“Government funding from 2017 has increased gradually from $66,000 to $200,000 in 2019. It is an undisputed fact that trafficking in person issues are multi-sectoral in nature and that the key challenge is insufficient funds to provide shelter and protection services for the victims,” she told IPS. 

Liabuba acknowledged the government was, by law, responsible for “repatriating victims and reintegrating them with the community as well as international victims”.

• Between 2016 and 2018, the Malawian government, with support from international agencies, repatriated over 80 girls who were trafficked to Kuwait under the pretence of gainful employment.
• In 2016, authorities said they needed about $17,300 to bring home 28 girls who were destitute in Kuwait after their employers took away their passports.

Some victims make their own way home

Modestar* was one of those young Malawian women who had been stranded overseas. She had left her home in Zalewa, a town in Malawi’s southern region for Kurdistan in northern Iraq, some 5,400 miles away, after being promised a well-paying job looking after the elderly.

But the salary she had been promised was slashed in half, and her phone and passport was confiscated upon her arrival. She was forced to work long hours caring for an elderly patient in a private home.

“I was not allowed to go outside of the compound. I worked long hours, at times from 7am to 1am [the next day], without getting paid,” she told IPS.

• The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery.  GSN has been focusing efforts to create a global movement of change and a list of recommendations aimed at employers states, among other things, that there should be; no withholding of passports and IDs, wages should be directly paid into employees’ bank accounts, their living conditions must be safe and they must be guaranteed freedom of movement.

Eventually she was rescued by Iraqi police who had been tipped off by another woman who had also been in domestic service with Modestar. But the women soon realised they may not be able to return home, as the employment agent refused to return their passports.

“It took the police threatening to shut down their agency for them to agree to let us go; so they went and cancelled our visas and gave us our money and we left,” she recalled.

She had been fortunate that the ‘agent’ had agreed to pay her return airfare — but it was only as far as Johannesburg, South Africa.

While the TIPF is meant for repatriation, there had been no funding available for her. Instead, MNAT stepped in cover the costs her journey from Johannesburg back to Malawi. 

Most cases of trafficking are local

Liabuba pointed out that in Malawi, most women and girls are trafficked from rural areas “to work as prostitutes in urban centres and to foreign countries for forced labour, prostitution and sexual exploitation”.

Thole confirmed this: “The country registers between 15 and 20 cases daily nationwide, mostly from border districts such as Phalombe, Mulanje, and Thyolo. Cases are also reported due to cross border businesses with countries like Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa and also to countries such as Kuwait and the Arab Emirates seeking job opportunities.”

• The International Monetary Fund estimates that 50 percent of this country’s 18 million people live below the poverty line. Youth unemployment, according to World Bank estimates as of April 2020, stands at 7.5 percent.

Are trafficking criminals are being charged correctly?

Liabuba said that in 2019 the country had recorded 142 trafficking victims, with 32 suspected traffickers charged.

“Following the prosecution and successful trial, 16 of the 32 suspects were convicted and four were discharged and the other 12 are being tried in different courts across the country,” Liabuba said.

Malawi’s Police Service had slightly different figures, stating that in 2019 140 victims of human trafficking where rescued, of which 65 were children.

Malawi Police Services’ public relations officer James Kadadzera told IPS that out of these cases, 48 suspects were arrested, prosecuted and are serving different jail sentences.

“Out of the 48 convicts the longest term was given to one who is serving 12 years imprisonment with hard labour; he was arrested in Phalombe on his way to Mozambique with six boys,” said Kadadzera.

But Thole said MNAT was concerned that many cases ended up being dismissed and that perpetrators are being fined for their crimes — which is against the law — instead of being given jail sentences.

“Convicts who are supposed to be jailed are being released on fines, with some getting light sentences. There’re some agencies which cannot even be questioned as to what sort of activities they’re operating in the country…law enforcement agencies don’t even fully understand the law and how it is supposed to be interpreted,” Thole told IPS.

Last year, Malawi was downgraded to a Tier 2 watchlist country by the United States Department of State. A Tier 2 country, means that while the country does not comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, they are making significant attempts to do so.  

According to a U.S. Department of State report on trafficking in Malawi, the “government did not investigate or hold any complicit officials criminally accountable despite these credible allegations and several past cases of Malawian diplomats, police, health, and immigration officials engaged in trafficking abroad. The government did not report referring or otherwise providing protective services to any trafficking victims”.

Educate people about trafficking and create more jobs

But Kadadzera called for intensive civic education on trafficking, especially for young women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by the crime. 

“Just last week a young lady approached us privately saying she was having doubts about a certain gentleman who claimed to be an agent who could help her get health care work in the United Kingdom. She had already paid the man [about $650] which she has since gotten back and swears not to get carried away again,” he said.

The U.N’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Malawi is one of the agencies working with the government to combat human trafficking.

• It supported the government develop the National Plan of Action Against Trafficking in Persons, conducted capacity-building activities against trafficking and aided with resource mobilisation to strengthen the trafficking fund, among other things.

“However, more needs to be done in creating services that increase employment opportunities and reduction of poverty among at-risk population,” said IOM Chief Commissioner Mpilo Nkomo.

Modestar is a case in point. While funding from the TIPF had not been available to her, upon her return home, MNAT provided her with capital, which she used to start a small business selling clothing and cosmetics.   

But Liabuba acknowledged that the government needed to do more in its fight against trafficking.

“The Malawi government should do more to lobby with donor partners for resources for construction of shelters and direct assistance to victims of trafficking…enhance capacity for law enforcers, judicial officers, the National Coordination Committee and protection officers…and develop more nationwide educational programmes targeting mainly women and children,” she said.

But Thole told IPS there was lack of political will to eliminate human trafficking in Malawi.

“We need structures, systems and financial resources in place to support the fight against trafficking in persons in Malawi. Other countries like the U.S. have put stringent measures in place to deal with trafficking for example banning visas for domestic workers for Malawian diplomats. We’re currently we’re on Tier 2 on the watch list which means we’re slowly moving into Tier 3, which is the worst,” Thole said.

* Name changed to protect her identity. 

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

A United Nations report states that the fact that women make up 70 percent of the global health workforce puts them at greater risk of infection. This is a dated photo of Catherine a nurse at Jinja referral hospital,in Uganda. Credit: Lyndal Rowlands/IPS.

By Samira Sadeque
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2020 (IPS)

As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow, concerns are simultaneously growing about the current and long-term effects this will have on certain demographics — specifically, women, the youth, migrant workers, and many employees around the world. 

This week, the United Nations launched a report “Shared Responsibility, Global Solidarity: Responding to the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19” that detailed how these communities are affected disproportionately by the current pandemic and quarantine. 

A burden on women

At the centre of it remains one demographic that likely bear the strongest brunt of it: women. 

“The fact that women make up 70 percent of the global health workforce puts them at greater risk of infection,” read part of the report. “The current crisis threatens to push back the limited gains made on gender equality and exacerbate the feminisation of poverty, vulnerability to violence, and women’s equal participation in the labour force.”

But just because women make up almost three-quarters of global healthcare professionals, does not mean they’re given the proper respect. According to a March 2019 report by the World Health Organisation, despite having such a crucial role in the public health industry, women continue to face various kinds of abuse or negligence in society, including but not limited to being attributed to a “lower status” or engaging in paid and often, unpaid roles, and being subject to gender bias and harassment. 

Meanwhile, given such a large percentage of the workers are women, the requirement of child-care can hinder a woman’s ability to work during the pandemic. According to the Centre for American Progress, currently millions of healthcare workers have a child under the age of 14, who might be struggling to manage between going to work and taking care of their children. 

“Because mothers’ employment is especially likely to suffer when they cannot find reliable child care, this finding suggests that millions of vital health workers currently could be struggling to secure child care, endangering their ability to work at a moment when the U.S. health care infrastructure is already spread too thin,” the report reads. 

At the launch of the report, U.N. secretary general António Guterres called for policies to not only address the pandemic and contain its spread, but also that would adopt measures to address the long-lasting impact of the crisis. He called for “designing fiscal and monetary policies able to support the direct provision of resources to support workers and households, the provision of health and unemployment insurance, scaled up social protection, and support to businesses to prevent bankruptcies and massive job losses.”

Plight of migrant workers, lack of connectivity further problems

Another demographic that is deeply affected as a result of the pandemic are migrant workers, according to the report.

“Migrants account for almost 30 percent of workers in some of the most affected sectors in OECD countries,” read the report. “Massive job losses among migrant workers will have knock on effects on economies heavily dependent on remittances, such as El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Tonga, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.” 

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Nepal cites the government’s figure that estimates between 700 000 to 800 000 Nepali migrants workers in India. 

“With the outbreak of COVID-19 and measures by the GOV to mitigate the risks, country is in a national lock – down. Economic production has stopped and many seasonal Nepali migrant workers had to stop working,” Lorena Lando, Chief of Mission at IOM Nepal, told IPS.

“Thousands returned back to Nepal before the lock down, others are still in India but unable to work. Many of the migrant workers are daily wages earners, and now they no longer have an income to support their families. Even for those that return back home, job opportunities will be scarce, keeping in mind that was the first reason why they travelled abroad for work.”

“The economic impact of COVID-19 in countries such as Nepal will be much bigger than other countries, and while some actions to take are good for the short term, other will need be a socio economic recovery response in longer vision,” she added. 

Beyond migrant workers, International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that the current crisis in the labor market could see between five and 25 million job losses. 

“The current crisis exacerbates the feminisation of poverty, vulnerability to violence, and women’s equal participation in the labour force,” the report noted, highlighting that even amid joblessness, women will be affected disproportionately. 

Furthermore, connectivity to the internet, especially at a time when all work and courses are moving online, is also of priority. The report states that currently an estimated 3.6 billion of the world’s population remain without connectivity, which means they may not have access to education, health information and telemedicine. 

As advocates had told IPS last week, digital access and internet connectivity is key at this time in order to ensure communication among communities.

A large number of children are regularly transported across Zimbabwe’s borders by women who are not their mothers. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

By Michelle Chifamba
HARARE, Feb 20 2020 (IPS)

Elton Ndumiso*, a bus-conductor who works the route from Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, to neighbouring South Africa, sees it all the time: Zimbabwean women travelling with three or four children, who are clearly not their own kids, and taking them across the border.

It’s a crime that most bus drivers or conductors either turn a blind eye to, or become accomplices in by assisting the women. 

Ndumiso told IPS that in many cases some bus drivers and conductors go as far as “talking to” or even bribing border officials, to allow them to let the children and women enter neighbouring countries without regular migration documents.

The practice is not a new one.

“A number of children have been transported by female smugglers to cross the border. Some of the women will be in possession of signed affidavits that claim they are the legal guardians of the children. It is difficult to prove what the intensions of the smugglers would be once they have crossed the border to South Africa,” Ndumiso told IPS.

• The Parliament of Zimbabwe notes that child trafficking is one of the greatest challenges the country is facing as a result of the prevailing economic conditions.
• And according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) — an intergovernmental United Nations agency that provides services and oversights around migration — there are a number of cases of Zimbabwean parents living in neighbouring countries who pay smugglers to reunite them with their children in their new country.

Ndumiso may not know what risks await the children after they cross the border, but he’s seen cases of children being at risk during the journey as well. He remembered a recent case of a woman who was smuggling four children across the border into South Africa and had lost one of the kids when the bus stopped for a break.

“The young child was eight years old and disappeared in the small mining town of Mvuma in Midlands Province were the bus had stopped for recess. We searched for the child but could not find her. We had to leave the woman at the nearest police and a police report was made,” Ndumiso told IPS, explaining that the woman had claimed she was transporting the children to join their parents in South Africa.

IOM told IPS that despite there being a large number of instances of child smuggling and trafficking across Zimbabwe’s porous borders, these cases still remain unknown and unreported because of the nature of the crime. 

IOM-Zimbabwe head of programmes Ana Medeiros told IPS that this was largely due to the fact that in many cases victims were afraid to speak out and tell their stories.

• The 2018 Zimbabwe Parliament Committee on Human Rights’ report states that figures about this illicit crime are unavailable.
• In the report, parliament recorded that in Zimbabwe the crime of child trafficking is difficult to establish as large amounts of money is gathered in the illegal trade to create networks around the world.
• “These are calculative syndicates who create links within the government and … world to recruit unsuspecting victims who are lured by the need to improve their lives,” read the report.

Head of the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, an independent rights body in this southern African nation, Virginia Muwanigwa, told IPS that very few cases of child trafficking are addressed each year in Zimbabwe as they are difficult to trace.

“In most cases, the traffickers who pay the smugglers to transport the children along the borders are close family members who may have … affidavits and consent from parents or guardians of the children for transportation and may also pay a bribe to border officials,” she explained. 

According to IOM, smuggling is mostly prevalent on the borders of South Africa and Botswana because documents can be forged and people bribed to allow entry without proper documents.

Medeiros, however, was careful to point out that, “smugglers are not traffickers because in most cases they are paid for their service to facilitate the process of smuggling. However, in some cases they may be linked to the traffickers.” The easily porous borders means that the trafficking of children is also prevalent.

“Child trafficking cases are difficult to trace because minors are not responsible for their actions and there is a thin line between smuggling and trafficking. Trafficking is not always clear as many trafficked people may be recorded as migrants in the country of destination,” Medeiros told IPS.

And Medeiros told IPS that when it comes to cases of child trafficking, usually trusted people like church and family members recruited children with promised work or education outside the country where they either ended up in domestic servitude or as sex salves.

“As a result of the nature of the crime, the component of confidentiality when investigating the issues of child trafficking and lack of knowledge on the crime of human trafficking, many families and children fall victim to trafficking, particularly with people who are close to them who are paid by traffickers to recruit young children,” Medeiros told IPS.

IOM is currently supporting Zimbabwe with capacity building and training programmes to educate people on the crime of human trafficking.

“IOM has supported the government through the Ministry of Public Service Labour and Social Welfare and Civil Society Organisations in providing information through promotional materials such as flyers, banners, T-shirts, road-shows throughout the country’s provinces to educate people on trafficking,” Medeiros told IPS.

In addition, the U.N. agency also shelters victims of trafficking, also providing them counselling.

“At the shelters victims receive counselling and share their stories on how they ended up being smuggled or trafficked,” Medeiros added.

The United States Department of State Trafficking in Persons in Zimbabwe says it also provided more than $ 750,000 in assistance for anti-trafficking programmes covering victim services, awareness and referrals, aligning legislation and building mutual capacity.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ), which actively supports the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 8 of decent work and economic growth, has focused much of its work on eliminating modern slavery. It, however, acknowledges that globally the legal system has failed to put an end to trafficking and that new laws are needed to protect citizens from this.

“The legal system can be the driver for change — so let’s use the instruments already in place — the law firms that are willing to drive change. Initiate any new laws/programmes not as a marketing add-on but a business norm and a business imperative. We need rule of law and safety of citizens in place — civilised society cannot exist without the rule of law in place,” GSN states on its website.

Muwanigwa too wants to see stronger laws in place to protect Zimbabwe’s children.

“There is need for legislation reform as very few cases of child-smuggling or trafficking in persons are investigated. Resource constraints are also the major drawback when it comes to issues of human trafficking in Zimbabwe,” Muwanigwa told IPS.

This is part of a series of features from across the globe on human trafficking. IPS coverage is supported by the Airways Aviation Group.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

** Writing with Nalisha Adams in Bonn, Germany

Excerpt:

The International Organisation for Migration says that in Bangladesh victims of human trafficking are either abducted or lured with promises of a better life. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Sarker/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Oct 17 2019 (IPS)

After his father passed away two years ago, the burden of caring for a six-member family rested on the shoulders of the now 19-year-old Farhad Hossain. He had no clue how he would support his family and pay for the education of his four younger siblings. 

Capitalising on Hossain’s plight, a neighbour offered him a “promising job” abroad in Iraq.

Hossain, a resident from Kishoreganj district, Bangladesh, believed that going abroad was the only way for him to earn enough money to advance in life. So, he sold a piece of land and gave Taka 300,000 ($ 3,750) to the neighbour. 

“Few days later, I, along with some 14 Bangladeshis, were flown to Iraq. And when we reached Baghdad airport, two Bangladeshis received us and took us to a den in the desert,” Hossain told IPS over phone from Iraq.

The next day, he said, a gang of human traffickers, including Bangladeshis and Iraqi nationals, detained them in a house and started beating them, seeking a ransom. “We were forced to call to our family members via phone informing to give them the ransom money otherwise they would kill us,” Hossain said.

“But, my family’s [financial] circumstances was not so good [and they couldn’t afford] to pay the money the traffickers demanded. They did not give us food and even water regularly. They beat us three times in a day. I suffered such torture for six months. And when my mother sent the traffickers another amount of Taka 200,000 ($ 2,500), they released me. But many remained detained there,” he said.

Upon release Hossain was able to find work at a petrol station near Baghdad. He earns Taka 25,000 or $315 a month now and sends some of this home to his family.

Zahid, who works as a bellhop in Dhaka, has a similar story of trafficking. Last year, one of his relatives convinced him to go to Malaysia, where he was promised a job and told that he didn’t have to pay large sums to migrate. So Zahid, a resident of Dhaka’s Gopalganj district, paid the relative Taka 50,000 (about $ 625) so he could leave the country via irregular means.

Zahid and about 100 people, mostly youth, embarked from Cox’s Bazar, the location of the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. They were to travel a treacherous journey by boat to Indonesia and then on to Malaysia.

After a few days, they reached the shores of Indonesia. Zahid told IPS that instead of travelling onwards to Malaysia, they were kidnapped and taken to a jungle where the traffickers demanded a ransom, threatening to kill them if their families did not pay up. They were frequently beaten by traffickers, Zahid said.

More than a month passed before local law enforcement agencies rescued them and deported them to Bangladesh.

“The damage has already done. My husband returned home. That is why we are not interested to talk about the issue any more,” Zahid’s wife told IPS, wishing not to be identified as they both still remain fearful.

• In 2018, about 8.9 million Bangladeshis migrated internally and around 730,000 left the country through regular channels to work abroad — 12 million Bangladeshis are currently employed abroad.
• But unknown numbers migrate each year through irregular channels, risking exploitation and abuse at the hands of smugglers and traffickers, according to the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2019.
• However, official data shows that over a five-year period from 2013 to 2018 over 8,000 people from Bangladesh, including women and children, were victims of human trafficking — a crime that places migrant workers at risk to physical and mental abuse, harassment, forced labour, forced and illegal marriages, sexual exploitation, illegal trade and in some cases, death.

“Due to unemployment problems and economic inequality existing in the country, a trafficked person doesn’t take much time to calculate their future financial gains and swallow the offer of the traffickers. The victims are either abducted or lured with promises of a better life by providing a lucrative job or marriage offers and false proposals to visit holy places. It is critical for all stakeholders to join hands and work together to combat human trafficking,” Sharon Dimanche, Deputy Chief of Mission for the International Organisation for Migration, Bangladesh, said in a recent statement.

• According to the U.S. Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2019, Bangladesh is on the Tier 2 Watch List for the third consecutive year.
• A Tier 2 ranking means that the country has not met standards of the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000 but has made significant efforts to do so.
• To be on the Tier 2 Watch List means is the ranking is similar to Tier 2 but the number of human trafficking victims is significantly high or significantly increasing in that country.

Human trafficking is illegal in Bangladesh.

The 2012 Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act criminalises sex and labour trafficking, prescribing penalties of five years to life imprisonment and a fine of not less than Taka 50,000 ($ 610).

But Shariful Islam Hasan, head of BRAC Migration Programme, told IPS, “The accused do not get punishment in most of the trafficking cases.”

The figures confirm this. Only around 4,446 trafficking cases have been filed under the Act since 2012. Out of an approximate 4,758 arrests there have been only 29 convictions, according to the Human Trafficking Cell of the Bangladesh Police.

“Trafficking is a transnational crime. The existing laws are good enough to prevent trafficking. But we need to implement the laws strictly to bring the traffickers under custody. And, raising awareness is the key issue where we should give intensive emphasis,” Dr Nakib Muhammad Nasrullah, a professor of Law, University of Dhaka, told a recent function observing the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 2019.

However, officials say that the Bangladesh government has taken various initiatives to counter-trafficking like formulating policies, strengthening task forces, and the formulation of various committees such as:

• GO-NGO National Coordination Committee to Combat Human Trafficking,
• Committee to Monitor the National Plan of Action for Combatting Human Trafficking 2018-2022,
• the Rescue, Recovery, Repatriation and Integration (RRRI) Task Force, and
• Vigilance Task Force and Counter-Trafficking Committees (CTC) at district, sub-district and union levels.

Recently, United Nations agencies in Bangladesh established a national migration network to ensure coordinated U.N. country-wide support to the Bangladesh government in implementing the Global Compact on Migration and other relevant policies. 

“People desperately want to go abroad seeking jobs. That is why sometimes they go abroad through illegal channels and become victims of human trafficking. But, the law enforcing agencies here are working sincerely to prevent trafficking incidents,” Alamgir Hossain, additional superintendent of police and spokesman of the Armed Police Battalion, told IPS over phone

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalisation of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

One month after the attack on Tajoura, Libya which killed 53 detainees and injured more than 87 others, little has been done to help the incarcerated migrants in the turbulent country. Many sub-Saharan Africans migrants go to Libya hoping to make it to Europe and a better life. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 1 2019 (IPS)

It is almost one month since an airstrike on a detention centre in Libya killed and injured scores of migrants and refugees locked up inside, many of whom were detained for doing nothing worse than fleeing instability or seeking better lives in Europe.

This week, it looked like world powers were finally making an effort to persuade Libya’s United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) to come good on its promise to free the thousands of refugees in lockups under its control.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday, diplomats were “concerned by the situation of refugees and migrants” in Libya, and were poised to take action, last month’s council president and Peruvian envoy Gustavo Meza-Cuadra told reporters afterwards.

Earlier, diplomats heard from the U.N.’s envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, who said the Jul. 2 bloodbath at the facility in Tajoura, a suburb of Libya’s capital, Tripoli, should prompt officials to close such centres once and for all.

“What is required is that they be shuttered,” Salame said via a video link from Tripoli.

“I urge the council now to call upon the authorities in Tripoli to take the long-delayed but much-needed strategic decision to free those who are detained in these centres.”

One month after the attack on Tajoura, which killed 53 detainees and injured more than 87 others — mostly sub-Saharan Africans who were seeking better lives in Europe — little has been done to help the incarcerated migrants in the turbulent country.

Despite GNA pledges to close Tajoura, officials instead filled the bombed-out hangar on a military base with some 200 new migrants and refugees since the late-night air strike that caused chaos and carnage in eastern Tripoli.

To make matters worse, new detainees include migrants who were picked up by Libya’s coast guard after their vessel capsized in the Mediterranean on Jul. 26 — a catastrophe that saw as many as 150 passengers drown.

Some 5,000 refugees and migrants are detained in facilities under the control of or linked to the GNA, Salame said. Some 3,800 of these were on the front lines of fighting in the North African country’s civil war.

The Lebanese diplomat also criticised the European Union (EU) for funding a scheme that sees Libya’s coast guard intercept migrant boats at sea before returning them to Libya and detaining them in places like Tajoura. 

Likewise, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other campaign groups have criticised the 28-nation bloc for bemoaning Libya’s ill-treatment of migrants while at the same time backing schemes that lead to abuse.

Amnesty has decried the “utterly inhumane” conditions inside Libya’s migrant lockups, where detainees have “little access to food, water or medical care” and endure “brutal treatment, torture, rape – and even being sold”.

John Dalhuisen, a regional expert with the European Stability Initiative, a think-tank, said the EU was complicit in abuses by making it harder for refugees and migrants to exit Libya and cross the Mediterranean.

“The EU has backed a policy that essentially amounts to containment. It has invested and trained the Libyan coast guard and reduced its own rescue services in a very successful effort to stop migrants reaching Europe,” Dalhuisen told IPS.

“It made some effort to improve conditions in Libyan detention facilities and secure access to them for international agencies, but with very modest results.”

An EU spokesperson told IPS that it backs Libya’s coast guard in an effort to stop refugees and migrants from perishing at sea, but that the 28-nation bloc was strongly against locking them up back on Libyan soil.

U.N. bodies, including the refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration, have assisted detained migrants and even arranged for some to be released and sent back to their countries of origin.

Some have been assessed and gained refuge in Europe; others have been settled elsewhere, such as Niger. But these schemes have only affected a tiny proportion of the estimated half-million refugees and migrants in Libya.    

Judith Sunderland, an associate director for HRW, said “space is limited” in UNHCR resettlement schemes and there are logjams, with few “longer-term solutions” for settling refugees after temporary stops in Niger.

“The UNHCR’s programme to evacuate asylum seekers and refugees from Libya is severely handicapped by the low number of resettlement pledges by European countries and the slow pace of actual resettlement of the few that are processed,” Sunderland told IPS.

The situation is complicated by turbulence across Libya, which has seen little but violence since the 2011 uprising that killed president Muammar Gaddafi and saw the nation collapse into a civil war that continues today.

The airstrike that devastated Tajoura occurred after renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) launched an offensive in early April to seize control of Tripoli. The GNA blames the LNA for the deaths, which the LNA denies.

Elinor Raikes, a regional director for the International Rescue Committee, an aid group that operates in Libya, said that locking up migrants was not a problem only in North Africa, but part of a global anti-immigrant phenomenon.

“Arbitrary detention is not a just response to seeking safety, but countries across the world, including in Europe and the United States, are taking part in what is a deeply concerning trend,” Raikes told IPS.

“Detention has become a form of border management, and this has meant that thousands of people are intercepted at sea and on land and then detained in inadequate living conditions, often in overcrowded cells at risk of disease and infection.”

African migrants in Libya. Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, to try to reach Italy by boat. Some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions. A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya claimed dozens of lives on Tuesday. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

A military strike on a detention centre for migrants in Libya that claimed dozens of lives on Wednesday Jul. 3 has reignited a debate over the poor treatment of the mainly African people who transit through the turbulent country.

The United Nations has called for an investigation into the strike on Tajoura detention centre, which held some 600 people in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli — part of a global chorus condemning the attack, which killed at least 44 people and injured 130 others.

But the strike followed repeated warnings about the vulnerability of migrants in guardhouses near Libya’s hotspots, and raises tough questions about whether it was necessary to lock them up in the first place.

“This is not the first time that migrants and refugees have been caught in the crossfire, with multiple airstrikes on or near detention centres across Tripoli since the conflict started in the city,” said Prince Alfani, a coordinator for the humanitarian medical group Médecins Sans Frontières.

“What is needed now is not empty condemnation but the urgent and immediate evacuation of all refugees and migrants held in detention centres out of Libya.”

By one estimate, some 3,800 migrants and refugees are held in government-run detention centres in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya in what human rights groups and the U.N. say are often inhuman conditions.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called for a war crimes probe into the strike, while condemning the “overcrowding” in Libya’s lockups for migrants and the rape and other violations that occur inside them.

“I also repeat my call for the release of detained migrants and refugees as a matter of urgency, and for their access to humanitarian protection, collective shelters or other safe places, well away from areas that are likely to be affected by the hostilities,” said Bachelet.

Libya is one of the main departure points for African migrants, fleeing poverty and war, trying to reach Italy by boat. But many are picked up and brought back by the Libyan coastguard, in a scheme backed by the European Union.

Two U.N. agencies — the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, the U.N.’s Refugee Agency — said they had relocated 1,500 refugees from lockups in Libya’s hotspots to safer areas in recent months.

“Including those victims at Tajoura, some 3,300 migrants and refugees remain arbitrarily detained inside and around Tripoli,” the two agencies said in a statement. “Moreover, migrants and refugees face increasing risks as clashes intensify nearby. These centres must be closed.”

In May, UNHCR had already called for the Tajoura centre to be evacuated after a projectile landed some 100 metres away, injuring two migrants. Shrapnel from that blast tore through the lockup’s roof and almost hit a child.

This week’s strike was the highest publicly reported toll from an air strike or shelling since eastern forces under Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive three months ago to take Tripoli, the base of Libya’s internationally-recognised government.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to condemn the attack late Wednesday,  Jul. 3, though it remained unclear whether it was the fault of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) force, the U.N.-backed Tripoli-based government’s forces or another group.

Haftar’s LNA, allied to a parallel government based in eastern Libya, has seen its advance on Tripoli held up by robust defences on the outskirts of the capital, and said it would start heavy air strikes after “traditional means” of war had been exhausted.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was “outraged” by the “horrendous incident” and called for an “independent investigation” to prosecute those responsible for what many onlookers call a war crime, said his spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“This incident underscores the urgency to provide all refugees and migrants with safe shelter until their asylum claims can be processed or they can be safely repatriated,” Dujarric told reporters Wednesday.

Haftar’s bid to capture Tripoli has derailed U.N. efforts to broker an end to the mayhem that has ravaged the hydrocarbon-producing North African country since the brutal, NATO-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has launched a project called Migrants as Messengers (MaM), which aims to make future candidates aware of the dangers of irregular migration. In Guinea, migrants who have returned home are involved in awareness-raising activities with logistical support and training from IOM-Guinea. Courtesy: Amadou Kendessa Diallo

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin , Mar 21 2019 (IPS)

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo wants to make sure that others won’t experience what he has lived through. The former irregular migrant who has returned home to Guinea from a jail in North Africa is calling on his fellow returnee migrants to establish associations in their respective countries, which will serve as powerful platforms to combat irregular migration across the continent.

“If I had the resources, I would tour Africa to create awareness about irregular migration. But because I haven’t got [those resources], I am urging all the African returnees wherever they are to take this fight into their hands and do something to stop the people who want to travel that route from experiencing what we went through,” he tells IPS.

The resource-rich West African nation has a population of about 13 million, of which 60 percent are less than 25 years of age. But widespread corruption, poverty, the country’s low score on the Human Development Index (Guinea ranks 175 out of 189 countries on the index), coupled with political unrest, has seen hundreds of young people attempt irregular migration with the hope of finding peace and stability in Europe.

The journey is a harsh one and Diallo’s own experiences of irregular migration are traumatic. In Morocco he was attacked by five youth and seriously wounded in the face and back. It, however, didn’t deter him from trying to reach Europe through irregular means. And it was only after he had been held for the third time in a Libyan jail that he eventually returned home through the European Union (EU)-International Organisation of Migration (IOM) Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

The 31-year-old is one of the Guinea migrants assisted to return home by the IOM. A total of 12,609 Guinean migrants stranded in North Africa have been assisted by the EU-IOM initiative to return home from Niger, Libya, Mali and Morocco. According to IOM’s recent figures, four percent of the returnees to Guinea are women, with six percent being minors.

Thirty returning migrants, including Diallo, were selected to become volunteers as part of IOM’s Migrants as Messengers (MaM) campaign in Guinea, which kicked off in June 2018. MaM. It runs in Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria, and is a unique peer-to-peer “awareness-raising project about irregular migration which includes various campaigns targeting, among others, parents, returning migrants and candidates to irregular migration.”

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/2071252583186046/

“They are carried out by young migrants who returned from different North African countries with the support of IOM and its partners,” Mariama Bobo Sy, the spokesperson for IOM in Guinea, tells IPS about the project.

As part of the awareness campaign, returnee migrants in Guinea have participated in events at football games, music shows and even universities.

“They also organised focus groups with young people in different neighbourhoods of Conakry and outside of the capital, particularly in Mamou, a crossroads town located 275 km of Conakry. Also, they were time to time in touch with the media to discuss the issue of irregular migration in a view of reaching more people, and get the message across to various sections of the population,” Sy says.

The experience made Diablo realise there was a need for further action. He has gone on to found the Guinean Organisation for the Fight against Irregular Migration, known as Organisation Guinéene pour la Luttecontre la Migration Irregulière (OGLIM) in French.

Apart from its headquarters in the capital Conakry, OGLIM has five national branches, namely in Kindia, Mamou, Labe, Kankan and Nzerekore. The group has currently 550 members in Conakry and 250 outside the capital.

“The terrible things that we saw and experienced during our ordeal in North Africa should serve as a catalyst for teaching the young generations about the dangers of irregular migration,” Diablo explains.
“However, we have to do it in a united manner so that the message conveyed through concerted efforts and as a bloc reaches the communities effectively and makes a long-lasting impact in our society.”

The International Organisation for Migration’s peer-to-peer campaign is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers, trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. Credit: Amadou Kendessa Diallo/IPS

By IPS Correspondent
CONAKRY, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo was a prisoner in Libya between October and November 2017, but he was not helpless. Far from his home in Guinea he understood the power of an organised union.

He mobilised other detainees around him to maintain order in the prison and to demand better conditions while in detention.

And when he finally returned to his home in West Africa, he used the power of the collective voice again, this time to caution others against experiencing what he did in Libya.

Back in Guinea, Diallo became part of the International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) peer-to-peer campaign, which is aimed at educating people about the real dangers of irregular migration. The project, known as Migrants as Messengers (MAM), trains returnee migrants to interview and record on camera returnee migrants. They are also taught how to publicly speak about their own stories. As part of the campaign, the returnee migrants, who are volunteers, also attend community events where they speak in public about their own stories and first hand experiences.

The aim is to capture and present authentic and balanced stories about their migration experiences and their reintegration back home. These are shared on social media as well as through local media.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/210358063198995/

Diallo, who was incarcerated in Libya for being an irregular migrant, understood how a group of people with a common cause could become a powerful influence for change. So he create an association with about 50 other young returnees migrants, to caution people against irregular migration.

“The fact that we managed to mobilise people of many nationalities in a prison, [I thought] why not call the migrants here to make an association? I contacted those with whom I was in prison in Libya. IOM has called us for the project Migrants as Messengers. After the training, as we were bonded, we said we continue like this,” he told IPS.

“The objectives are to sensitise young people to abandon irregular migration, to set up reintegration projects to reintegrate migrant returnees first and to attract potential migrants to invest in our projects. [It aims to show them how] to succeed at home,” Diallo said.

The association is still very young, but is making progress.

Mariama Bobo Sy, the spokesperson for IOM in Guinea, told IPS, “The association’s executive office, which is made up of six people, was set up after the permission and the approval was granted on Aug 28, 2018 by the governorate of Conakry, the capital city. As we speak, these trained VFOs have become independent and have been taking part in various IOM projects that focus on migration in all aspects.”

Highly motivated, the association members willingly share their experiences in neighbourhoods and public places. They have conducted sensitisation campaigns at universities, through traditional media and social networks and also meet with other returned migrants to help them tell their stories. They plan to work in partnership with businesses and other employment providers to promote the professional reintegration of returned migrants.

IOM, for its part, has agreed to pay the fees for the headquarters of the association as they set up. Lucas Chandelier the communication officer at IOM in Guinea told IPS: “We are supporting  them to help them get started but the idea is that they can stand on their own and find their own funding. And the fact that they are an association will allow them to raise other grants, other than those of IOM.”

*Additional reporting by Issa Sikiti da Silva in Cotonou, Benin.

Mohamed Camara, 37, wants to go to the West. But, with the advice and information promulgated by Migrants as Messengers volunteers, he now promises to follow a regular route. Credit: Amadou Kendessa Diallo/IPS

By Amadou Kendessa Diallo
CONAKRY, Mar 5 2019 (IPS)

Every year, there thousands of young people, including women and children, who try to irregularly reach Europe and what, they hope, will be a better life.

But the journey to Europe has been dangerous for many. This has included experiencing harsh and difficult conditions when crossing both the desert and the Mediterranean, and being subject to scams, prison, violence and racist insults on a daily basis. So why are they risking their lives?

Most of the young Guineans interviewed by IPS mention the low level and quality of education in their country, endemic unemployment and sometimes the destruction of their shops and workplaces during political demonstrations. They say there is “no hope” for them if they stay in the country in the face of hardships and family misery.

Some of them also told IPS that they dream of going to Europe to “continue their studies and have the means to support their families”.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has launched a project called Migrants as Messengers (MaM), which aims to make future candidates aware of the dangers of irregular migration. In Guinea, migrants who have returned home are involved in awareness-raising activities with logistical support and training from IOM-Guinea.

Most of them tell IPS that they have easily re-integrated among their communities. This is the case for Nestor Haba, a returnee migrant. “I went out with my head up. I did not steal someone’s money before taking this very dangerous route. I am well reinstated.”

On the other hand, Fatoumata Diallo tells IPS she became the laughingstock among her friends. “Others laughed at me saying that the European came back but we did not see what she sent.” But, “there were also some friends who encouraged me by saying that this is not the end of the world.”

However, most of the migrants surveyed have a common cause: that they are determined to permanently repudiate irregular migration because of the unspeakable torments that they have experienced firsthand.

Back in Guinea, most migrants have become involved in awareness-raising activities organised by IOM, and have been trained how to interview and record other returnee migrants.

This is the case of Abdoul Aziz Touré, a young returning migrant who travelled through Gao (the most difficult route), who asserts, “Today, I can thank God. Before I travelled, frankly, I had no hope. I had enough problems here. But since my homecoming, thanks to the IOM, I have a lot of hope. With all the help that IOM has given me, I can hope. I did not get what I was looking for in the West. But today, I hope I will have it here because realities have shown me that it is possible to succeed here.”

Elhadj Mamadou Diallo recalls the reasons for his departure from Guinea: “I left because I had nothing … I could not stay because when parents support you throughout your studies, you finish and stay for two more years, still being dependent on [your] family.”

He added that if one wanted to work in order to become independent, one had to leave home.

How do migrants sensitise Guinean youth?

Equipped with an app that has a questionnaire, the returnee migrants take advantage of major events around Conakry, the country’s capital, to educate Guineans on the dangers of irregular migration.

They also go door-to-door as part of an outreach to deter both parents and youth. If this initiative is appreciated by some young people and parents, there are others who do not want to understand anything because they are determined, whatever the cost, to take the route of irregular migration.

IPS followed the Guinea team on its campaign through many parts of the capital.

The MaM volunteers introduce themselves, explain the reasons for the presence of the team, and ask if the youth are willing to answer a series of questions.

During a Guinea-Rwanda football match, played in Conakry last year, Béavogui Jean, tablet in hand, showed up in front of a youngster. “I’m here to raise awareness about irregular migration. Our goal is to explain the suffering involved in this unfortunate adventure in the desert and in the host cities. That’s why we come to young people to raise awareness,” he began. This teenager immediately stopped him and said: “I am busy”.

On the other hand Camara Fantamady, 23, an unemployed graduate, willingly answered the questionnaire. He did not know about the MaM project. However, he says, the story of the repelled migrants has changed his perception of immigration. Now, he says, “if I have to travel, I will take the regular route.”

Mamadou Diouldé Barry is an first year undergraduate student at a private university in Conakry. He does not know anything about the MaM campaign either but says, “I dream of going to Europe to have something to feed my family with, and have money to live well.”

“I have talked to people there; they said it’s better than here. Even if you do not find enough, having something to eat is easy. Life is beautiful,” he says.

However, he adds: “I do not want to go through the desert. The road has enough risks. I have many friends who have been there, they told me not to follow the road.”

But “if it’s the plane, when you fly from here to Morocco, it’s very easy. You have fewer problems and there is no suffering. When you land in Morocco and you have money, you are not going to stay for long.”

But, admits Barry, “when you make the trip through Niger, it will take you three to four months to arrive in Morocco or Libya. While with the plane, you go to Morocco, if you have the money, you will not stay more than two weeks there. People have said that if you have the money, you can take safer boats.”

“In any case, what interests me is to enter Europe, whatever the route,” he concludes.

It is people like Barry that Haba wants to educate further: “We take advantage of major events to convey awareness messages so as to dissuade young Guineans and avoid other tragedies. Young people want us to share our story”. But, he laments, “in Guinea, there are few young people who dare give up on illegal immigration, but there are others who say that in Guinea, it’s better for them.”

Mohamed Camara, 37, plans to go to the West. But, with the advice and information provided by MaM volunteers, he now promises to travel through the regular channels if he has the means to do so.

“I want to go to Europe,” he reveals, before saying that he knows the difficulties involved in taking the road to Niger. “With the information received concerning the road to Gao or Niger, about the harassment en route, I refuse to venture there. My friends who have been to these places have told me that they have gone through hell. Thirst, hunger, arrests, robbery and all kinds of bullying, were their everyday companions.”

Door-to-door outreach…

IPS follows the migrants in their door-to-door outreach at Lansanayah Barrage, a neighbourhood in the upper-class suburbs of Conakry. During this awareness day, the team visited homes, young people at a tea gathering, and in bars.

An elderly lady in her 60s (who requested anonymity) encourages the team to continue raising awareness. “I do not have any candidates here. I am against irregular immigration,” she says, after asking the guests to sit on the terrace of her house. She states that the government alone cannot solve the phenomenon. For this sexagenarian: “what the Guineans are fleeing, the others use this to stay in their country.”

For Mohamed Conté, a third year Bachelor’s student, “young Guineans are aware of the risks of irregular migration but want to travel.”

It is a confirmation of what Haba says: “Some young people are determined to go. But, we are doing our best. We tell them it’s very dangerous.”

Many returned migrants in Nigeria are involved in an IOM sponsored initiative aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS   

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

Nigeria accounts for some of the largest number of irregular migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa.

Since April 2017, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has assisted over 10,000 stranded migrants in Libya, Niger, Mali and other transit or destination countries to return to Nigeria. 

This is being done under the European Union (EU)-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

Some of the returned migrants have successfully settled down to a new life of business under the EU-IOM initiative. But beyond this, some of them are taking time off their business schedules to volunteer for an IOM-sponsored advocacy programme called Migrants as Messengers, which is aimed at sensitising potential migrants about the dangers of embarking on irregular migration.

International Migration Organisation Volunteer Field Officers campaign in public places in Nigeria’s Edo State against irregular migration. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Feb 1 2019 (IPS)

“Don’t assume if you attempt the journey your fortune will change for the better,” a woman says over the public address system in the crowded Uselu market in Benin City, the capital of Nigeria’s Edo State. “Many embarked on the journey and never made it. Many people are dying in the Sahara Desert.” 

She was speaking about a journey that many here in this West African nation have sought to go on in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families. But it entails embarking on a route of irregular migration reportedly fraught with danger, trauma and abuse.

But in an ironic twist of fate, many young Nigerians who have attempted the irregular travel to Europe, through the Sahara Desert and across the Mediterranean sea, are back home and campaigning against the practice.

Using experience to teach about the dangers of irregular migration

Known as Volunteer Field Officers, VFOs, a group of 15 returnee migrants are working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), under its Migrants as Messengers (MaM) Programme in Nigeria.

These VFOs were among the Nigerian migrants the IOM brought home from Libya and other transit countries under the European Union-IOM Joint Initiative For Migrant Protection and Reintegration. Since the beginning of the project in April 2017 more than 11,500 migrants have been returned home after their failed attempt to reach Europe.

Marshall Patsanza of the IOM  described it as a peer to peer advocacy programme under which “migrants who embarked on the journey to Europe through Libya are sharing their experiences, thus informing others of the dangers of the journey.”

It includes a series of messages and videos posted on social media, interviews on community radio stations, and community screenings of a movie on irregular migration.

The campaign has also taken place in the media, at schools and in public places like on busy highways and in marketplaces.

A dangerous journey and a sensitive subject

The Uselu campaign starts with the female VFO addressing traders and customers in the market over a public address system.

She tells her audience that irregular migration through the desert to Libya and then over the Mediterranean sea to Europe is highly dangerous and no one should undertake it, irrespective of the hardships they face at home.

But the market turns rowdy when she criticises the widespread practice in Edo State where poor mothers encourage their children to embark on the dangerous journey, hoping that they will earn large amounts of money abroad to lift their families out of poverty.

Edo is the Nigerian state with the highest incidence of irregular migration.
Data gathered from the IOM under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative, shows that since April 2017 about 50 percent of migrants returned from Libya under the initiative are from Edo State.

It is here that the VFOs are most active, many times going the extra mile to ensure a successful campaign. And it is what they do now in Uselu market.

“Many of our mothers here, some of them have sent their children to the Libyan route, it is bad, you should advise yourselves because there is nothing in the Libya route,” the female returnee migrant says.

Economic recession leads to support for irregular migration

But angry women shout her down and engage the VFO team in a war of words. They insist that irregular migration has become inevitable in the face of the economic situation in the country, which has left many families extremely poor. In 2017 the country began recovering from the worst economic recession in a quarter of a century. But rising inflation and a slowdown in the oil sector are among the contributors to a sluggish growth.

“Many of the good houses in Benin [City] were built with money sent home by those who went abroad through Libya,” one woman says. Another argues that it is unfair to ask people not to travel to Europe via the desert and the sea when they are not allowed to travel by air.

Such deep support for irregular migration from parents accounts for the widespread practice of it in Edo State.

This, and the long history of irregular migration in the state which started in the 1980s following a downturn in Nigeria’s economy, makes the work of the VFOs challenging at times.

Personal, traumatic stories and photographic evidence change minds

But the personal stories of the VFOs remain an effective tool in their campaigns. They are also armed with posters and handbills that illustrate their near-death experiences when they attempted the journey to Europe.

VFO Jude Ikuenobe says when confronted with a situation similar to the one faced at Uselu Market he always tells people about his imprisonment in Libya. He supports this by showing people photos, taken shortly after his return from Libya and his imprisonment there, of how emaciated he was.

He also tells people how his friends died while crossing the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean sea.

Because traditionally people from Edo State are buried near their loved ones, Ikuenobe often tells people how sad it is to die in a place like Libya or how tragic it is to have their bodies thrown away in the desert, rather than being buried by their loved ones at home. He says when people hear his first-hand experience and see his photographs they often become discouraged to attempt irregular migration.

The VFOs use their new communications skills with great effect at the Uselu market. And tensions soon calm down after people see the photographs, posters and handbills.

A safe space to share own stories of tragedy

Some people in the market even feel safe enough to share their own stories. One lady admits her young, beautiful friend drowned at sea as she attempted to cross from Libya to Europe.

One man, Chinedu Adimon, says two of his friends also drowned making the same crossing. “One of them had two young daughters,” he recalls.

Many in the market whose relatives have embarked on irregular migration, and whom they have not heard from since, are sobered by the reality of the dangers. They wonder what could have happened to their loved ones.

Pius Igede bursts into tears.

He says his daughter recently made the irregular journey to Europe and he does not know her whereabouts.

“She only made a phone call that she is out of the country. I don’t even know where she is now, whether it is Libya or any other place I don’t know,” he explains.

He adds that he suspects some of his other children are planning to travel to Europe as well.
And for him, the VFO’s posters and handbills may be the saving grace to convince them to remain at home.

“I want to collect the posters to show my children to discourage them from going to Libya,” he says. “I got scared when I saw the posters. I am frightened [that] my children will secretly travel without my knowledge.”

Closing a vital information gap

Osita Osemene of the Patriotic Citizen Initiatives, a non governmental organisation campaigning against irregular migration, says the VFOs were able to convince people in the market about the dangers of irregular migration because they have first-hand experience.

“It would have been very difficult to convince anyone in the market if the VFOs were just ordinary people who had no experience of irregular travels,” says Osemene, who is himself a returnee migrant.

He explains that the lack of information about the true impact of irregular migration is a serious problem as many people assume those who attempt the dangerous journey to Europe actually arrive there and attain success.

“They were surprised when we showed them some of the things people go through, how people cross the sea in boats that can easily sink,” he says.

Ikuenobe says as VFOs they are working to close a vital information gap.

“So many mothers are not educated, so many mothers are desperate to see their children succeed, but we have to make them understand that irregular migration would not bring success,” Ikuenobe says.

For Patsanza the performance of the VFOs at Uselu Market shows how effective they can be in the fight against irregular migration.

Ikuenobe says the campaign is being conducted continuously in order to educate as many people as possible.

“The message is that even if things are bad at home, that is no justification for people to go and commit suicide. It is like going to kill yourself when you attempt to travel to Europe through the desert and sea.”

Students of the Itohan Girls Secondary School in Benin City, Nigeria sing during their morning assembly. Courtesy: Sam Olukoya

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Jan 17 2019 (IPS)

The International Organization For Migration (IOM) has taken its campaign against irregular migration to schools in Nigeria. The school campaigns are meant to educate children who are among victims of human traffickers. After being recruited, victims of traffickers are made to embark on dangerous irregular journeys through the desert and by sea in an attempt to reach Europe. Many children die in the course of these journeys while many others are enslaved. Some young girls end up in the sex trade.

Students of the Itohan Girls Secondary School in Benin City, Nigeria sing during their morning assembly. The students have been joined by a team from the IOM and a group of young Nigerians who returned home after their failed attempt to migrate to Europe. With young girls at great risk of being targeted by traffickers who need them for the sex trade, Marshall Patsanza of the IOM says a girls’ school like this is an ideal place for the organization to carry out its campaign.

Returnee migrants volunteering for the International Migration Organisation (IOM) are campaigning in Nigerian markets against irregular migration by sharing their own stories of strife. Credit: Sam Olukoya/IPS

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Jan 8 2019 (IPS)

Thousands of migrants mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa have died or ended up in slavery as they attempt to travel to Europe irregularly through the desert and across the sea. Many were recruited by traffickers who deceived them into believing that the passage to Europe would be safe and easy.

The International Organization for Migration, IOM, has embarked on a peer-to-peer campaign aimed at letting vulnerable people know the real dangers.

Migrants who returned home after their failed attempt to reach Europe have been engaged volunteers to tell their harrowing stories in markets and other public places in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.

The voice from the Public Address system urges people to travel the right way and not to kill themselves with the dangerous journey through the desert and sea. Messages like this were spread within some Lagos markets by returning migrants.

Returnee migrants are telling their personal stories on radio as part of the IOM's Migrants as Messengers campaign against irregular migration. Courtesy: Sam Olukoya

By Sam Olukoya
BENIN CITY, Nigeria, Dec 21 2018 (IPS)

The International Organization for Migration has taken its campaign against irregular migration to the airwaves in Nigeria. Working in conjunction with some Nigerian radio stations, the United Nations Migration Agency has launched a radio series on safe migration.

The programme, which includes dramas, is made to entertain the audience while at the same time highlighting the dangers of irregular migration. Nigeria has a high incidence of irregular migration and many have died while undertaking dangerous journeys through the desert and sea trying to reach Europe.

Masters of Laws student Khoudia Ndiaye is expected to qualify from Senegal’s University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in 2019. Ndiaye is a returnee migrant. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Mikaila Issa
DAKAR, Dec 17 2018 (IPS)

Masters of Laws student Khoudia Ndiaye will graduate from Senegal’s University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) next year. The 24-year-old, who specialised in notarial law and dreams of becoming a notary, wants to bring justice closer to local communities like those in her local district of Hann Bel-Air, in Senegal’s capital Dakar, where she rarely sees female lawyers.

While the young, intelligent and dedicated Ndiaye has a bright future ahead of her and speaks with enthusiasm about it, there was a time not too long ago that she never dreamt of becoming so successful. Instead she was living—in fear and subject to racism—in a foreign country.

Ndiaye is a returnee migrant. In 2012, while only 18, and after being enrolled at UCAD’s Faculty of Law for just four months, she was overwhelmed.

Now when she speaks about her reasons for wanting to leave Senegal, she lowers her head and laughs.
“In the first year of law at the university, we were 4,000 students and I underestimated myself because I did not think I had a chance to succeed in this world,” she tells IPS.

A journey into disillusionment 

She began to look for something else to do with her life. She always wanted to work at a call centre and had been told by her cousin Pape, who was living in Morocco, “that call centre employees are very well paid and well connected.”

Daro Thiam (left), a returnee migrant from Mauritania is being interviewed by Khoudia Ndiaye (centre) and and Ndeye Fatou Sall (right) in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Julia Burpee

Leaving one’s family and daring to go on an adventure without warning is a brave decision—surrealistic even—for a young girl in a deeply-religious society like Senegal. “It was not easy to make such a decision. I did not tell my parents because if they knew about my idea, they would not allow me to leave,” Ndiaye remembers.

Pape put her in contact with the people who would help her migrate without regular papers.
“I financed my trip with my scholarship up to 200.000FCFA which is the equivalent of 348 dollars.”
But on the day of the trip to the “promised land” she realised that she was deceived because she had believed she would fly to Morocco, but instead “ended up taking a bus by force”.

After journeying 3,000 kilometres in a minibus, Ndiaye, and the other young Africans who were her travelling companions, arrived in Marrakech, Morocco.

Very quickly, her dream of working in a call centre turned into disillusionment.
What she hadn’t been told, and perhaps what her cousin didn’t know, was that call agents in Morocco were required to have two years of university credits.

For a time she lived with her cousin and his wife and while she was well treated, things were not necessarily easy.
She was witness to her cousin’s mugging and attack in a public street and feared the same would happen to her one day. “Moroccans on a scooter tried to steal his phone. He wanted to defend himself, but young Moroccans stabbed him. I saw the blood flowed and this image traumatised me,” she says with trembling voice.

Home to try again

She decided to return home and her parents, who by then knew of her presence in Morocco, paid for her return flight. Once home, with the advice and support of her family and relatives, Ndiaye pursued her studies once again.
She re-enrolled in university, and it was her second attempt to obtain her Bachelor of Laws.

“At the university, it was a bit like home, I was ashamed of the eyes of people and my classmates because they were all aware that I had stopped my studies to go to Morocco,” Ndiaye regrets.

A new beginning
But on a cold winter’s morning in November, and in the midst of a crowd of young students jostling to register at the university, we manage to force our way through the crowd to reach the main entrance of the Faculty of Law. It is here that Ndiaye’s professors and other UCAD staff gave her a chance. It is here that Ndiaye tried again to obtain her degree, this time succeeding.

“I received support from my teachers, especially one of my teachers who cheered me up whenever I needed it. She now sits at the Dakar court,” Ndiaye says excitedly.

Migrants as Messengers

As Ndiaye thrived with her studies, she was contacted by a friend, also a returnee migrant, who gave her the phone number of Mohamadou Ba, who is in charge of managing a community of returnee migrant volunteers in Dakar.

Ba is part of the Migrants as Messengers (MaM) awareness-raising campaign, which was developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The peer-to-peer messaging campaign trains returnee migrants how to interview, film and document the stories of their fellow returnees. They share their experiences through Facebook and on other social media sites, providing a platform for others to do the same.

When Ndiaye heard about it, she joined. She met with other returnee migrants and heard of their experiences and stories, as she shared her own. Because MaM is structured as a peer-to-peer campaign, it allowed Ndiaye and other returning migrants to structure a message for young people that was based on their own first-hand experiences “… the best thing is to stay at home or if you decide to travel, do it by a normal way.”

Support that goes beyond financial aid

Ndiaye is also glad for the support she received from the network. “We have gained confidence and hope. And this is much more important than financial aid,” Ndiaye says.

It is not just Ndiaye who has benefited from the training.

Yaya Mballo and Ndèye Fatou Sall are also returnee migrants in Senegal. Thanks to the IOM training they have been able to re-integrate into society and even launched their own business—where they offer public speaking and videography services.

Julia Burpee, Media Development Specialist and trainer at MaM tells IPS how the project has helped its participants transform.
“When we started the videography and storytelling trainings, many of the migrants who returned home from Libya and other countries, were too timid and ashamed to share their stories of migration.
“The more they stood in front of—and behind—the camera and saw the benefits of using video as a tool for healing and advocacy, the more they started to speak up. They now all speak confidently and with conviction about their migration experiences, eager to help inform other West Africans about the risks they faced, and ultimately, save lives,” Burpee says.

Tomorrow, Dec. 18, marks International Migrants Day and many of the returnee migrants will be celebrating it through events held around Dakar.

But today, Ndiaye is keenly interested in gender rights. In fact her Master’s dissertation was on the gender balance in Muslim succession law here in this West African nation.

“Inheritance law fascinates me the most because it is the regulation of everyday life and also it is a fact of society that is heard constantly,” she tells IPS.

“Yes women can,” Ndiaye concludes.

• Additional reporting by Samuelle Paul Banga in Dakar.

At the Guédiawaye town hall in Dakar, Senegal's capital, the community attends a unique community event – a film screening and a debate about irregular migration. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

By Mikaila Issa
DAKAR, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

It is four o’clock in the afternoon in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, when pupils, students and workers begin to fill the municipal town halls of Grand Yoff and Sociocultural Centre Grand Médine to attend a unique community event – a film screening and a debate.

What they hear there surprises them.

Men and women, both in person and on video, relate stories of human suffering, exploitation and abuse they experienced on their journeys as irregular migrants.

“You are beaten, threatened with weapons, you lose all your rights as soon as you enter this country. You are sold by your own brothers.” It is one of the poignant testimonies heard in a 45-minute documentary made by returnee migrants and with the support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

IOM is running a unique Migrants as Messengers (MaM) programme in Senegal, Guinea Conakry and Nigeria. It is a peer to peer messaging campaign that shares information about the dangers of irregular migration as told through the stories of returnee migrants. IOM has trained 80 returnee migrants in these three countries on how to interview and collect the stories of fellow returnees. The campaign also uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

A young man at Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal, engages in a discussion about irregular migration. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

The town hall discussions

The town hall screenings are also part of the campaign. They offer the community and returnee migrants a platform to share their stories since a participatory approach is used and the film is followed by a debate in French and in the local language, Wolof.

Back at the town halls in Dakar, during both screenings, silence reigns supreme for 45 minutes.

Those who sit in attendance look clearly stunned by the depth of suffering explained through the testimonies of the returnee migrants.

“We have seen and survived,” Ndèye Fatou Sall, a MaM volunteer, tells IPS. She lived previously in Saudi Arabia where she was employed as a domestic worker.

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Many are driven and supported by their families, who have significant influence over their lives. In some cases, families use all of their savings to send their sons to Europe.

“Personally, I left because of my family. When I got my [Bachelor’s degree]…my mother saw that the sons of other families went abroad easily. So she used all her savings to finance my trip,” Issa Ngom says during the discussion at Grand Médine. After a few months amid harsh living conditions he decided to return to Senegal.

“I think we need to do a lot more outreach and show young people the opportunities [at home]. But we must go beyond because the reality is that most kids hang out on the streets, drinking tea all day instead of finding things to do,” Aminata Diop says during the session at Grand Yoff Dakar.

You can succeed at home

Seckouba Cissé agrees during the debate that, “It’s not the trip that will make you a successful man.”

“We are used to blaming just the youth for all, because we dismiss them as people without ambition. But we never implement a policy to encourage young people to generate local wealth,” Cissé says.

Babacar Gueye, a young graduate who is currently looking for a job, explains during the Grand Yoff session that the money used to travel irregularly to Europe could be better invested in creating work opportunities at home.

“I went to Europe and I came back. The money you spend to go there to suffer, you can invest it here in Senegal to find something to do. We refuse to stay [home] because the family puts pressure on us to ‘succeed’; we get tired of this word.”

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

The dangers behind irregular migration 

But the poignant testimonies in the film made Charle Diatta aware of the realities and the risks involved with irregular migration. He speaks up during the debate and says he wants the returnee migrants to warn his cousins about this.

“I have cousins ​​in Yarakh who want to go to Europe, and I want you to go there, if possible, in order to try to make them aware before it’s too late.”

The screening of the film and the resultant debate is part of IOM’s impact evaluation approach “to measure the dimension of community engagement, public interaction with returning migrants volunteers; as well as to touch the perception of indigenous peoples on the issues of irregular migration and migrant status,” Marilena Crosato, media engagement and advocacy at IOM Senegal, tells IPS.

A total of 16 screening and debate sessions are being held throughout Senegal. And returnee migrants are actively working as volunteers and stakeholders to raise awareness.

And many of them are using the MaM Facebook page to share their experiences. Though it is on social media where many feel they first saw distorted realities of what it was like to live as irregular migrants in Europe.

Participants at the Grand Yoff session say that social networks can be shimmering surreal things that belie the true facts of irregular migration.

“Because of the beautiful photos and videos about life in Europe that my friends sent me, I was about to leave so as to have such a good life too,” Djiby Sakho says.

But the town hall screening and debate has shown him the darker side of the journey.

• Additional reporting by Samuelle Paul Banga in Dakar.

One thread is common through most of the discussions here. And it is that the youth resort to irregular migration in order to find work and better opportunities for themselves that they feel are not available to them at home. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)/Alioune Ndiaye

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Communities in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, have been meeting across the city to watch a 45-minute documentary film made by returnee migrants, with support of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM is running a unique Migrants as Messengers (MaM) programme in Senegal, Guinea and Nigeria. It is a peer to peer messaging campaign that shares the dangers of irregular migration as told through the stories of returnee migrants.

IOM has trained 80 returnee migrants in these three countries on how to interview and collect the stories of fellow returnee migrants. The campaign also uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

The town hall screenings are also part of the campaign. They offer the community and returnee migrants a unique platform to share their stories as a participatory approach is used and the film is followed by a debate, in French and the local language, Wolof.

In refugee camps at Dolo Odo, Ethiopia there is enough food for small markets to operate. One in every 70 people around the world is caught up in a crisis, including the refugee crisis, with more than 130 million people expected to need humanitarian aid next year. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By Friday Phiri
MARRAKECH, Morocco, Dec 10 2018 (IPS)

Amidst negative sentiments and last-minute withdrawals from the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) by some member countries, the United Nations says the regrettable decisions are being fuelled by misinformation.

Addressing the media Dec. 9 on the eve of the historic two-day GCM conference in Marrakech, set against the dramatic backdrop of Morocco’s snow-capped Atlas Mountains, Louise Arbour, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration, addressed the question of whether the U.N. could have been better engaged with countries to persuade them to come on board.

“I have to tell you, I am not convinced you can persuade those who don’t want to be convinced,” Arbour says. “I am skeptical it would not have turned it into a dialogue of the deaf.”

The GCM is the first-ever inter-governmentally negotiated agreement to cover all dimensions of international migration in a holistic and comprehensive manner, providing a platform for cooperation on migration. Its genesis lies in the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants adopted unanimously by the U.N. General Assembly in 2016. It is the culmination of 18 months of discussions and consultations among Member States, and other actors, including national and local officials, civil society, private and public sectors and migrants themselves.

“It creates no right to migrate; it places no imposition on States; it does not constitute so-called ‘soft’ law—it is not legally binding,” Arbour says. “It expressly permits States to distinguish, as they see fit, between regular and irregular migrants, in accordance with existing international law. This is not my interpretation of the text—it is the text.”

She added that it is surprising there has been so much misinformation about what the Compact is and what its text says, emphasising that “the adoption of the migration compact is a re-affirmation of the values and principles embodied in the U.N. Charter and in international law.”

This was, she conceded, notwithstanding several member States who have already declined to participate, others making last-minute indications they would not adopt the compact, while some have stated their final decision must await further internal deliberation. These include, most notably, the United States. Other countries also include Austria, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Latvia and Bulgaria, among others.

United Nations Special Representative for International Migration Louise Arbour speaks to the media in Morocco. Courtesy: Global Compact for Migration/CC by 2.0

“It is regrettable whenever any State withdraws from a multilateral process, on a global issue, the outcome of which has generated overwhelming support,” Arbour says. “It is particularly regrettable when a State pulls out from a negotiated agreement in which it actively participated a short time before.”

Arbour emphasised the process of adoption would still go on as planned, with over 150 States registered to attend, joined by over 400 partners from the U.N. system, civil society, private sector and academia.

Even with the adoption of the compact, the unwelcome last-minute withdrawals and negative sentiments around the compact have unsettled several stakeholders from civil society.

Carolina Gottardo, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Australia, says the civil society movement is concerned with deliberate false information being peddled about the compact.

“It is your role as media to report facts and ignore political ideology,” Gottardo said during an IPS and U.N. Foundation training session for journalists on the eve of the conference.

The GCM defines 23 objectives covering all aspects of migration. Each objective comprises a general goal and a catalogue of possible actions, drawn from best practices, that States may choose to utilise to implement their national migration priorities.

“Many challenges still stand in the way of implementation – not least the toxic, ill-informed narrative that too often persists when it comes to migrants,” Arbour says.

During an evening reception for U.N. delegates that followed Arbour’s announcement, António Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General, officially launched the U.N. Network on Migration, an agile and inclusive network of all key stakeholders on migration—U.N. agencies that have migration components, private sector, civil society and others—with the aim of mobilising the full resources and expertise to assist Member States in their endeavour to implement the 23 objectives outlined in the compact. 

He announced that the “the International Organization for Migration (IOM) will play a central role” in the network.

The U.N. chief also expressed confidence in the new network, highlighting some of its core features, saying it would focus on collaboration and have an inclusive structure, while embodying U.N. values, like diversity and an openness to working with all partners, at all levels.

“Your participation in this conference is a clear demonstration of the importance our global community places on the pursuit of the better management of international migration, through a cooperative approach that is grounded in the principles of state sovereignty, responsibility-sharing, non-discrimination and human rights,” Guterres told conference delegates.

But, as many attending the GCM acknowledge, in this age of social media and polarised political posturing, success all too often depends more on message and narrative—one of the main challenges the GCM, and the migration issue in general, faces.

“Report on facts, not political ideology,” Gottardo told journalists. “Avoid dichotomies between ‘good’ or ‘bad’ movements of people.”

• This story was brought to you by IPS with support from the United Nations Foundation . IPS organized capacity building workshops for media in Marrakech.

In the popular municipality of Estación Central, in Santiago de Chile, a Haitian hairdresser has established a barber shop where Creole is spoken and the nationals are served. At the end of this year, migrants will have sent 466 billion dollars to family and friends in their countries of origin. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS, Nov 30 2018 (IPS)

At the end of this year, migrants will have sent 466 billion dollars to family and friends in their countries of origin. Despite this record amount these remittances have little to no effect on the dire economic state of affairs in those home countries. Earlier this week in Brussels, a group of experts convened to think of ways to make the sent money work in a way that benefits more than just a few lucky families. 

Though relatively stable as a percentage of the world population, there have never been more migrants than today. Out of the one billion people that moved away from their places of birth, some 258 million have found a place abroad while 760 million remained within their own states. Despite it being a heated political debate in the global North, only one third of all international migration is directed from South to North. The overall majority, some 100 million people, move between states in the global South.

These numbers were presented by Laura Palatini, Belgium and Luxemburg’s mission chief for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Palatini was the first of five speakers on an international conference, organised by IOM, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), several Brussels municipalities and local and international NGOs at the Brussels Parliament this Tuesday.

These one billion migrants each year send home approximately 466 billion dollars. “It is said that if remittances would be country, it would have the right to claim its seat in the G20,” says Valéry Paternotte of Réseau Financité, a Belgian network of organisations for ethical finance, “It is three times the annual budget of development aid world-wide.”

But according to Paternotte, the numbers need a closer look. “In Belgium for instance, 38 percent of all remittances are destined to neighbour France and 4 percent for Luxembourg while Senegal, Congo, Rwanda and Bangladesh together account for less than one percent.” Then again, the estimate of 466 billion is most probably an underestimation, as not all countries are being taken into account, second and third generations are not included, nor are informal remittances – migrants travelling with envelopes, small transfer agencies and possible other unknown practices of sending money home.

Nevertheless the 6.4 billion flowing annually into Morocco is just as important for the economy as the entire phosphate sector or tourism. The nine billion dollars sent to Congo by members of the diaspora accounts for twice the country’s annual budget. Remittances are an indispensable source of income for 750 million people worldwide. Research in 71 developing countries indicates that a 10 percent rise in remittances leads to a 3.5 percent drop in the number of people living with less than one dollar a day.

Researchers on the topic agree that remittances are a stable source of income for developing countries that are not affected by economic shocks or cycles of regression and growth. Moreover, they are the first form of help that reaches regions affected by natural disasters or epidemics. This became most evident with the last ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and the recent earthquake in Nepal.

But as of yet, the money flow doesn’t lead to structural changes in the countries of origins whose economies remain in a dire state. “The first obstacle is that the money received is spent, not invested in the local economy,” says Paternotte, “and this is understandable. In the world’s least developed countries less than a quarter of adults have access to a bank account. The received money is kept under the mattress. That is a very practical but very important barrier to saving and investing in the local economy.”

Traditional banks seem not to be interested in putting up branches in developing areas, let alone rural zones in those developing areas, the expert explains. “Moreover, social projects – schools, hospitals, cooperative farms – aren’t invested in due to poor returns. That is a characteristic of the system and not very different in our own country,” the Belgian national says.

Besides that, lots of migrant communities lack financial literacy, which together with cultural factors leads to inefficiency. Pedro de Vasconcelos, manager of the Financing Facility for Remittances at IFAD in Rome, gives the example of a Filipino community in Italy.

“We found out that they couldn’t say no when someone called for money,” he says, “it’s in their culture. It was a revelation for many of them when we told them that you can refuse when there’s not a good reason. Then we began to save. Two hundred out of every thousand euros, which is a lot. With all these savings we started investing in rural areas around their home town which used to be an agricultural area but now had become an importer of food. From three farms for laying hens we quickly went to five. On Facebook, the diaspora followed everything that happened in the homeland.”

Several of the investors in Italy moved back after the project turned out a success. “Because they see that there are possibilities there. That work can be created. The Philippine government is now looking at how this project can be scaled, to achieve real economic growth through the Diaspora.”

De Vasconcelos’ example shows that remittances can play a role in reversing or even stemming migration. But according to agronomist Jean-Jacques Schul of the Belgian NGO, IDAY International, an important factor should not be overlooked: the involvement of the local government.

“Remittances carry a risk,” Schul says, “because thanks to the money from abroad, the government does not have to listen to its citizens. They can survive without the government’s support. And without a government that listens to its citizens, nobody sees a future in their own country. Which makes them leave. It is a vicious circle. ”

The solution? When it comes to any kind of transfers of funds to the South, civil society and the government must be encouraged to start a constructive dialogue.

“Provide a policy in which remittances, or at least a part of those, serve to start up projects together with the government. If development aid is made available, make sure that citizens’ movements can check where that money is going. That is hardly the case now. Only with collaboration between citizens’ movements and the government will sustainable change occur. Nobel Prize winners Amartya Sen and Angus Deaton have been proclaiming this for years, why don’t we listen?”

When isolated by floodwaters, families, like this one in Morigaon, India, have no choice but to use boats for transportation; even children must learn the survival tool of rowing. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Carmen Arroyo
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 16 2018 (IPS)

This year the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) noted that 2017 saw the highest number of displacements associated with conflict in a decade-11.8 million people. But this is not a situation that is going to be resolved any time soon, says the organisation which has been reporting on displacements since 1998.

These numbers were published in the World Migration Report 2018, which was released by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) last month. The report also stated that an average of 25.3 million people are displaced each year because of natural disasters. “This will only get worse with climate change,” said IDMC’s director Alexandra Bilak in an interview with IPS.

Bilak has over 15 years of experience with NGOs and research institutes working on African conflicts. She lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2004 to 2008 and in Kenya for the next five years. In 2014, she joined IDMC. The biggest change for her, claimed Bilak, was “disconnecting from the field and connecting to high political levels of decision making.”

The IDMC, part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, is the leading international institution of data analysis on internal displacement. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the centre works towards creating dialogues on displacement and providing accurate metrics. IDMC, according to Bilak, takes data analysis to the next level: “We combine many methodological approaches to provide a databased to build research agendas. It is a very interest combination of quantitative and qualitative research, but not from an academic perspective.” She added: “The analysis wants to be practical and policy-relevant.”

Under Bilak, the institute has changed its focus. While three years ago the IDMC understood displacement as a human rights issue, now it treats it with a more comprehensive approach. “By doing that, it wasn’t having the right kinds of conversations,” claimed Bilak. Now, their employees are not only lawyers and political scientists, they are also anthropologists, geographers, and data analysts.

With a calmed voice, Bilak tells IPS that this shift was a team effort, and that she is very happy with the results. Excerpts of the interview below.

Inter Press Service (IPS): How did your interest on displacement start?

AB: I started my work in the Great Lakes region in Rwanda, but when I moved over to Eastern Congo I was exposed to the full scope of conflict impact. Displacement was a major issue. I was really struck with the capacity of communities to cope with the problem. That’s where my interest started.

Then I moved from one job to another and narrowed down on the issue of displacement. Now, at IDMC we are very interested in understanding the connections between internal displacement and wider migratory flows, cross border movements, and broader development challenges. At Geneva, you can bring the experience from the field to the higher level and see where it all ties in together.

IPS: What are your goals for the future of IDMC?

AB: I think we want to maintain this position as global authority and consolidate our expertise on data. We cannot rest on our laurels. We have to keep up our efforts. We need to continue building trust-based relationships with national governments. They are the change agents when it comes to finding solutions for internal displacement. You can’t achieve anything if you avoid them.

IPS: If national governments are the change agents, what’s the role of international organisations in displacement?

AB: Although it is a development issue for the national governments, there are many humanitarian implications that need to be addressed. International organisations provide that immediate protection and assistance that international displaced people need. This is the role they must continue playing, despite their reduced budgets. Also let’s keep in mind that there are many diplomatic efforts to prevent these conflicts.

This is the development, humanitarian and peace building nexus. They need to go hand in hand for a comprehensive approach. But yes, ultimately, it still boils down to political will.

IPS: What about natural disasters? How can we predict them to avoid their consequences?

AB: There are already models that project into the future and give a good sense of the intensity of natural hazards in the future. IDMC has actually developed a global disaster displacement risk model. There’s a way of having a sense of the scale and scope of what to expect in the future.

But our message has always been the same. This is only going to get worse with climate change, unless there is a significant investment in preventative measures like disaster-risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

We know which are the countries that are going to be most affected. The latest report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) on climate clearly pointed out what communities are going to be more affected in the future. This will impact internal displacement.

IPS: So, what would be your recommendation to a national government to manage this situation?

AB: There are many recommendations for those countries that suffer from the impacts. They need better early warning systems and preparedness measures, so people can be quickly evacuated in the right way.

Our recommendation is also to build on the good practices governments that have already been implemented. For example, in the Philippines displacement figures are part of their disaster loss database. It would be great if every country could have the same kind of national data system in place.

Other recommendations come from processes of relocation. In the Pacific, entire communities that are at risk of climate change impact have to be relocated. How are these communities going to be moved in a dignified way respecting their cultural heritage?

Finally, there also needs to be a gender perspective to make sure that women and children can be consulted in the process.

IPS: What do you predict for the next 12 months in terms of displacement?

AB: Based on what we are monitoring, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East will continue to be areas of concern for us due to conflict. We are looking at a recent peak in displacement in Ethiopia. This is not a situation that is going to be resolved any time soon, so we will see a displacement crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria… also in Syria. We will look at high displacement figures next year.

In terms of disaster displacement, we will see massive hurricanes in Asia, which will have long-term consequences. There are pockets of displaced people that remain so for large periods of time, also in high-income countries like Japan.

Excerpt:

Daro Thiam (left), a returnee migrant from Mauritania is being interviewed by Khoudia Ndiaye (centre) and and Ndeye Fatou Sall (right) in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

Khoudia Ndiaye and Ndeye Fatou Sall set up a smartphone on a tripod to begin recording a video interview with Daro Thiam in Hann Bel-Air, a neighbourhood in Senegal’s capital Dakar. Hann Bel-Air is the departure point for many of the migrants who leave the city and country on irregular routes – boats to Spain, crossing the Sahara desert to the Mediterranean Sea, or to countries nearby.

Thiam, a mother of four, has recently returned from Mauritania, where she was unable to find a job to support her children."If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.” -- Ndeye Fatou Sall returnee migrant.

The three Senegalese women on a sunny rooftop near the beach have something in common: they are all migrants. Each of them left their home country to better their lives and support their families. But this afternoon is about Thiam’s story.

Ndiaye and Fatou Sall clip a microphone on Thiam’s dress then stand behind the tripod, counting down to the first question. They ask Thiam, “Why did you decide to leave home and where were you travelling to?”

Thiam answers in their native language, Wolof. The women nod; a sense of shared understanding is tangible among them.

They continue, reading other questions off the mobile application created for interviewing migrants: “What family members or people were you trying to support?”

“How did your family react to your return?” they continue.

The women are getting to know one another. After the interview, they will share their own stories with Thiam, and that is the point. The Migrants as Messengers (MaM) awareness-raising campaign, developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

By capturing the migration experiences on-camera and sharing the videos on Facebook, the campaign aims to educate potential migrants and their families about the risks involved in irregular migration. It also presents alternatives to migrating on routes that run dangerously through the desert, on to the Mediterranean Sea, and often lead to indefinite detention in North African countries like Libya.

MaM, funded by the government of the Netherlands, is a regional project run in Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Nigeria. It trains migrants who return home, like Ndiaye and Fatou Sall, in videography, interviewing, migration reporting, and online advocacy, so they can volunteer as ‘citizen journalists,’ or more appropriately, ‘migrant messengers.’ So far, IOM has trained nearly 80 migrants, referred to as Volunteer Field Officers, across the three participating countries; about one-third of the volunteers in Senegal are women.

Migrant returnees as storytellers

Law student Ndiaye is a returnee from Morocco, and Fatou Sall is a mother of five who lived and worked as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia for nine years. Ndiaye and Fatou Sall returned to Senegal in 2013 and 2017, respectively. They were recently trained alongside four other women – Maty Sarr, Aissatou Senghor and Fatou Guet Ndiaye – and four young men to become migrant messengers.

Fatou Sall experienced a difficult nine years in Saudi Arabia and is prepared to be open with others about what life truly was like. There comes from her an honest and heartfelt sharing of her former life.

“Everything I’ll say comes from the heart because it is the experience that I lived and that I am willing to share with others. I tell them right away ‘don’t go without regular papers because it is not easy that side’.”

She is happy to be part of the MaM campaign “and satisfied to be participating in this training, which I put to good use to create awareness about travelling [irregularly] when my association’s activities kick off.”

Since her return in 2017 she founded an association for former female migrant workers to Saudi Arabia called ‘Association of Senegalese Women Former Residents of Saudi Arabia’.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/707358599616225/

Women as influencers

She says that while she was paid USD 700, as opposed to the USD 200 she could get as a domestic worker at home, migrating irregularly was not worth it. She says she was fortunate that when she was ill her employer would pay for her doctor’s bills, but this would come out of her own salary.

“If you want to go overseas, get your papers in order and have a contract well signed and legalised, and buy medical insurance. If you cannot get these, please stay at home and look for any job, even in cleaning.”

She says that as a woman who experienced a difficult life overseas she doesn’t want other women to go through the same thing.

“It’s a lonely life out there, and as a woman and mother, most of the time you think about your family, especially if things begin to fall apart. The employment agencies operating in Dakar sold us to those Arab bosses as slaves and we worked endlessly, 24 hours sometimes with no pay.”

“I’m not forcing people or women to stay in Senegal, but if they don’t have the necessary documents, and think that they will get everything there, they are deluded.”

Anti-black sentiments are rife in Saudi Arabia, where police raids on foreigners’ homes are frequent, Fatou Sall says.

Ndiaye, who travelled to Morocco with papers in the hope of finding a job at a call centre, recounts a terrible tale of racism.

“I witnessed many stabbing and beating incidents by Moroccans on blacks and I became very scared to go out. The Arabs provoke black people and beat them up, steal their phones in broad daylight, and sometimes stab them. Life is very hard in North Africa, especially if you don’t have papers,” the law student explains.

“It’s also heartbreaking to see pregnant women embarking on such a dangerous adventure and suffering there. In the end, I thought returning home was the best option. Women, especially mothers, should stay home with their children.”

Fatou Guet, another returnee from Mauritania, who attempted to reach Spain on a makeshift boat, pleaded against travelling irregularly to Europe.

“Our trip lasted 10 days and we failed somewhere in the Mauritanian waters, where some people drowned and I got very sick and also nearly died. It is not good at all,” she tells IPS emotionally.

https://www.facebook.com/MigrantsAsMessengers/videos/217535472195014/

The campaign’s performance

But the experiences of these women and others who have attempted irregular migration have not gone unnoticed.

To date the IOM has close to 23,000 followers on their MaM Facebook page, 90 percent of whom are from Nigeria, Guinea-Conakry and Senegal.

College student Aminata Fall (23), who has been following the MaM campaign on Facebook, describes it as “genius”.

“It’s an emotionally charged campaign where some shocking stories are being told by brave and courageous people. You must be a mad person to travel [irregularly] to North Africa after watching these videos. Ha, surely it’s hell on earth out there,” Fall tells IPS.

IOM digital officer Marshall Patzana explains to IPS that they post new videos daily to “flood the online space with first-hand testimonies of the journey so as to counter the narrative that the smugglers are peddling online.”

“Our videos are usually between 30 seconds to a minute in length and as of last week the videos on the page have been viewed for a total of 30,590 minutes. Our content has reached over 550,000 people online since we started the Facebook page in June,” he says.

Patzana says the Facebook page creates a hub for returnees to interact amongst each other and to share best practices on how to reach out to their communities and advocate for regular migration.

Content produced by returnee migrants is also uploaded here and creates an online library of testimonies for anyone who wants to learn more about the journey.

“There is [also] a closed group where returnees from the different countries share their own personal stories and provide each other with peer support,” Patzana explains.

The IOM plans to extend the project into 2019 and to expand to three or four additional West African countries.

While they plan to reach more people, the women who are currently sharing their stories with others have hopes and plans for the future too.

Fatou Sall hopes that her association, which is based in Rufisque, will get more funding and kick off with activities soon.

Ndiaye thinks that her life would not have progressed as it has if she had not returned home. The master’s degree student will qualify soon. “Five years down the line, here I am, I’m about to finish my master’s in law. Next year I’ll be done, something that would have been impossible if I was in Morocco waiting for a job.”

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

The Migrants as Messengers awareness-raising campaign (MaM), developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), uses innovative mobile technology to empower migrants to share their experiences and to provide a platform for others to do the same.

By capturing the migration experiences on-camera and sharing the videos on Facebook, the campaign aims to educate potential migrants and their families about the risks involved in irregular migration. It also presents alternatives to migrating on routes that run dangerously through the desert, on to the Mediterranean Sea, and often lead to indefinite detention in North African countries like Libya.

MaM, funded by the government of the Netherlands, is a regional project run in Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, and Nigeria. It trains migrants who return home, like Ndiaye and Fatou Sall, in videography, interviewing, migration reporting, and online advocacy, so they can volunteer as ‘citizen journalists,’ or more appropriately, ‘migrant messengers.’ So far, IOM has trained nearly 80 migrants, referred to as Volunteer Field Officers, across the three participating countries; about one-third of the volunteers in Senegal are women.

Even though fewer people are attempting irregular migration to Europe since the start of the year, the number of deaths that occur along the Mediterranean route has dramatically increased, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Amnesty International estimates. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Maged Srour
ROME, Sep 10 2018 (IPS)

“The Italian and other European authorities are engaging – on the migration issue – in a policy which has the foreseeable results of numerous deaths.” It is a grim warning from expert on international law, refugees and migration issues, and member of the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), Itamar Mann.

In February 2017, Italy entered into an agreement with Libya to provide funds to Libyan authorities for the coordination of relief operations in the central Mediterranean. Since the agreement, the Libyan Coast Guard has returned migrants to Libya who attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

However, according to a recent Amnesty International report both “Italy and the European Union (EU) are bolstering their policy of supporting the Libyan Coast Guard to ensure it prevents departures and carries out interceptions of refugees and migrants on the high seas in order to pull them back to Libya. This is also contributing to rendering the central Mediterranean route more dangerous for refugees and migrants, and rescue at sea unreliable.”

When IPS asked Mann if he thought there was a direct link between the “pull back” of migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean and the increased number of migrant deaths, Mann described this policy as “killing by omission.”

Even though fewer people are attempting irregular migration to Europe since the start of the year, the number of deaths that occur along the Mediterranean route has dramatically increased, according to International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Amnesty International estimates.

According to Amnesty International:

• From January to July 2018, 1,111 people were reported dead or missing along the central Mediterranean route,

• The death rate among those attempting the crossing from Libya has surged to 1 in 16 in the period June-July, 2018,

• This was four times higher than the rate recorded from January-May 2018, which was 1 in 64.

Migrants arriving at Lampedusa, Italy in this picture dated 2011. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

Moral responsibility lies not only with Italy, but Europe too

In May, GLAN filed an application against Italy with the European Court of Human Rights for a 2017 incident where the Libyan Coast Guard allegedly intervened in the rescue, by an non-governmental organisation, of a sinking dinghy. At least 20 people died, including two children, when the vessel sunk. But the Libyan Coast Guard is reported to have engaged in “pull back” and returned the survivors to Libya, where they reportedly endured detention in inhumane conditions and were beaten, starved and raped.“While Italy retains legal responsibility, the process has been facilitated in multiple ways by the EU, and [therefore] the moral responsibility is not exclusively Italian.” -- Itamar Mann, Global Legal Action Network (GLAN).

According to Violeta Moreno-Lax, a senior lecturer in law from Queen Mary University of London, and legal advisor to GLAN: “The Italian authorities are outsourcing to Libya what they are prohibited from doing themselves. They are putting lives at risk and exposing migrants to extreme forms of ill-treatment by proxy, supporting and directing the action of the so-called Libyan Coast Guard.”

Mann, however, pointed out that, “while Italy retains legal responsibility, the process has been facilitated in multiple ways by the EU, and [therefore] the moral responsibility is not exclusively Italian.”
“The EU, for example, has tried to advance migrant processing centres in Libya, engaged in training of Libyan forces, and turned a blind eye to continued violations. So beyond the legal case, simply blaming Italy and ignoring the larger context would be misleading,” he told IPS via email.

The Italian government is expected to respond in due course to the legal papers.

Italy’s response to irregular migration

Italy’s stance on migrants has been reported previously. The country’s interior minister Matteo Salvini was reported by the Telegraph as saying his country would no longer be “the doormat of Europe” as it had been left to largely deal with the migrant crisis on its own. The newspaper reported that in May he had called for Italy’s coast guard and naval ships to be pulled back from patrolling the Mediterranean and brought closer to home.

There have been a number of other reported incidents of alleged “pull back”.

At the end of July, Italian authorities reportedly rescued migrants at sea and returned them to Libya. Also in July, the story of how migrants on the Italian coast guard ship, the Diciotti, were reportedly blocked from disembarking by the country’s ministry of interior generated much criticism and gave rise to a heated debate in Europe. The migrants were eventually allowed to disembark in Trapani, Sicily, after intervention by Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella. 

“The repatriation of refugees to Libya is illegal, as international law prohibits the transfer of people, who encounter distress at sea, to ‘unsafe havens,’” Benjamin Labudda, an expert on migration issues and housing conditions of refugees in the European context and a PhD Scientific Assistant at the Institute of Sociology of University of Muenster, told IPS.

‘Non-refoulement’, a well-known fundamental principle of international law, no country receiving asylum seekers can expel or return them to territories where their lives or freedom could be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

Concern for migrants sent back to Libya

Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for IOM, told IPS he was also concerned about the return of migrants to Libya.

“If a boat is rescued in international waters and returned to Libya, we are facing a ‘pull back’. The fact that we are referring relief operations in international waters to Libya is ambiguous because the migrants would probably be taken to an unsafe port,” he said.

He said the issue should be kept under close observation, as according to international law migrants rescued at sea should not be returned to Libya, which was “not a safe harbour.”

“We must promote legality, through more residence permits and integration policies,” said Di Giacomo. “A simple closure would be misunderstood by the countries of origin of these migrants. They would only see ‘the rich Europe that sends back the poor Africans.’”

Labudda added that agreements for the distribution of refugees among EU countries must be institutionalised and enforced, as many countries still refuse to welcome refugees.
“A solution regarding the structure of a process of distribution has to be found as soon as possible in the upcoming months,” he added.

Excerpt:

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof was speaking on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm, in Senegal, about his experience attempting irregular migration to Europe. Courtesy: International Organization for Migration (IOM)

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
DAKAR, Sep 8 2018 (IPS)

El Adama Diallo left his home in Senegal on Oct. 28, 2016, with dreams of reaching Europe in his heart and a steely determination that made him take an alternative, dangerous route to get there despite the absence of regular migration papers in his pocket.

It was a journey that took him from West Africa—through Mali then to Agadez in Niger and across the Sahara desert—to a southern oasis town in Libya.“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses.” -- El Adama Diallo, returnee migrant.

It was a route populated with heavily-armed human traffickers, bandits and the still-alive bodies of migrants like him, emaciated and weak from lack of water and food who had been left behind to die under the blazing North African sun.

Diallo survived it. Barely.

“All the roads leading to Agadez, and eventually to Libya and Italy are dangerous,” he told IPS on the sidelines of a live broadcast on Radio Afia Fm on Monday, Sept. 3, from the station’s base in the bustling township of Grand Yoff, in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

For me, the dream of reaching Europe irregularly is over, and I call on all who are considering irregular migration to stop it now, 32-year-old Diallo said.

Diallo has much to say about his experience. He finally was able to return to Senegal on Dec. 5, 2017 with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has been working in coordination with the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Libyan government to assist migrants who want to return home.

He now wants to inform others about his experience. Diallo has become a volunteer in an innovative awareness-raising campaign by IOM called Migrants as Messengers (MaM). MaM is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign that trains returning migrants to share their stories of the danger, trauma and abuse that they experienced while attempting irregular migration. The stories are candid and emotional testimonials.

As is Diallo’s own story.

Kidnapped and inhumane detention conditions

Diallo arrived in Sabha, southwestern Libya and found “almost the whole of Africa was there; Malians, Gambians, Ivorians, Nigerians and others.” From there he hoped to go to Tripoli to catch a boat to Italy. But he was immediately kidnapped by gangs posing as human traffickers.

“They demanded a ransom of [about USD800] for my freedom, which was paid a week later by my family back in Senegal,” he said.

Being caught by human traffickers showed him that race or nationality did not mean solidarity when it came to making a profit.

“There is no love and games that side. Blacks are betraying their own brothers and giving them away to Arabs. They are the ones that are negotiating the ransom on behalf of their Arab bosses,” he said.

But after being released he spent about 10 months in Libya, still waiting to travel to Italy. He was eventually arrested by security forces and held, along with thousands others, in a detention centre in Tripoli in such inhumane conditions that eventually, he knew; all he wanted to do was to return home.

He stayed for two months in cells that were so overcrowded “we were piled on top of each other like fishes.”

“Some people slept standing and others spent the night in stinking toilets, and we only ate once a day. It was terrible,” Diallo explained.

He endured it until he was given the opportunity to return home with IOM.

Explaining the dangers to others

Mamoudou Keita, a reporter at Radio Afia, told IPS that community radio stations were the right platform to debate this issue.

“Community radio is close to people on the ground. I think it’s a good communication strategy. However, it must not be limited to the media. It must descend to the streets, mosques and churches to ensure that the message is understood everywhere,” Keita said.

“Besides, the marketplaces are also good places to spread the word because some mothers are funding their children’s [irregular] trips to Europe. They must be told that it’s morally wrong and dangerous.”

El Hadji Saidou Nourou Dia, IOM Senegal spokesperson, told IPS that his agency was working with 30 community radio stations affiliated to Association of Union des Radio Associatives and Communautaires du Senegal (URAC) or Community Radio Stations of Senegal. The stations are based in Dakar, Tambacounda, Kolda and Seidhou, which are regions most affected by irregular migration.

He said the stations were owned and managed by people who were leaders in their respective communities and that people listened to and considered their advice.

“Our partnership, which is expected to end in December 2018, consists among others of building capacity of radio journalists as how to best treat information related to migration,” he said.

“When a migrant speaks about his own experience, the things that he went through, that surely has the power to make the candidates to irregular migration think twice before they take that route,” Dia said.

It is possible to be successful at home

A radio programme similar to the one that Diallo was on this week was also hosted last week in Pikine, east Dakar, on Radio Oxy Jeunes Fm.

Hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof–is himself a returnee migrant.

“It’s still possible to harvest success by staying at home,” the tall artist, who has a single called “Stop Irregular Immigration,” said.

“I saw with my own eyes people dying in the Sahara Desert, and women getting involved in prostitution to survive when they ran out of money. Also, human traffickers rape the same women they are supposed to help reach Europe,” he said during an emotionally-charged show hosted by Oxy Jeunes radio journalist Codou Loum.

Ndiaye spent two months in Libya in 2016 and paid about USD1,400 to human traffickers to help him get to Italy.

But he never made it.

Asked if he was aware that parents were funding their children’s trips to North Africa and eventually to Europe, he replied: “Stop putting pressure on your children to become rich quickly to support the family.”

“Paying for their irregular trip to Europe is not a good thing to do because if these children get killed, it will be a big loss for you.”

African governments need to do more for their youth

Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality, who was also on the show with Ndiaye, said migration was everyone’s right. However, she stressed it has be to done in a formal and legal way to avoid people falling into unpredictable traps.

Diene, while echoing the rapper’s sentiments that it was still possible to make it in Africa, appealed to African governments to create a youth-friendly environment that would persuade young Africans not to embark on such dangerous journeys.

“I think African governments have failed in their duties to help the youth thrive and improve their lives right here at home. They must support the youth through adequate youth employment programmes and legal migration policies.”

Diallo echoed the same sentiments when he spoke about the reasons for irregular migration.

•  Additional writing by Nalisha Adams.

By IPS World Desk
DAKAR, Sep 7 2018 (IPS)

Migrants as Messengers is a peer-to-peer messaging campaign by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) where returning migrants share with their communities and families the dangers, trauma and abuse that many experienced while attempting irregular migration.

The stories are candid and emotional testimonials about the difficulties they faced.

Here is the discussion around irregular migration with Senegalese hip-hop singer Matar Khoudia Ndiaye–aka Big Makhou Djolof and Ramatoulaye Diene, a legal migration activist and radio personality.

Migrants arriving at Lampedusa, Italy in this picture dated 2011. Jim arrived in Italy via an ocean port in 2010. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Aug 23 2018 (IPS)

Jim*, a 34-year-old Nigerian, has been living in Italy for the last eight years. And even though he has a legal permit to reside in the country, he is yet to find steady employment. Instead, for three days a week you will find him begging for alms in front of a supermarket in Rome.

“Nobody is giving me a job even if I go four days a week to give my resume all around the city,” he tells IPS.

Before leaving Nigeria in 2009, he was president of a Christian youth congregation in his hometown. One day, his church was bombed. Jim blames the bombing on a major, central-right political party in Nigeria.

He says the party was against the donation of a generator to his church by another political party."More closure creates only more illegality and consequently the impossibility of promoting and applying integration policies for those migrants, who do not have a legal permit to stay in Europe.” -- Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for IOM.

“We were not subtly colluding with any party,” says Jim.

“Simply, a certain party that had been successful in the last elections, had given us an electric generator and this was not good with the [major central-right political party] because it was afraid of losing its influence.”

As an important figure-head at the church, Jim’s life was at risk.

“One day I was beaten by some militants of the [central-right political party],” Jim tells IPS, closing his eyes when he describes those moments.

He eventually fled the country. And when he arrived in Libya in 2009, Gaddafi was still in power.

When IPS asks him if it was a good place to live, Jim does not hesitate: “It was a terrible place. There was no freedom. I could not walk freely on the streets. [If I did] I would have been stopped by the Asma boys, the criminal gangs who would have robbed me and called the police to lock me up. This was daily life there.”

He says in order to feel safe he would pay to travel by taxi. In 2009, it cost him between USD 7 to USD 144.

“Walking in the streets for a black African was too dangerous.”

Jim worked for five months as a car washer in Libya and saved the USD 1,200 he needed to pay for the trip to Italy.

“The journey is not easy at all, my friend,” he says, his eyes full of emotion.

“I remember that big wave.”

The boat’s captain, a young Algerian man, was able to navigate the wave without any losses.

“Everyone was alone with himself [in that moment], praying to God not to die.

“And when they came to rescue us, I just felt so relieved.”

Nigerian migration to Italy: trends and facts

Jim is one of the 106,069 Nigerians, according to the Italian ministry of interior, who are residing in Italy as of the start of the year. These numbers do not include the many irregular migrants, estimated by the ministry to be in the thousands.

According to the United Nations Migration Agency (IOM), although the number of Nigerian migrants entering Italy decreased between 2017 and the first half of 2018; from 2015 to 2017 Nigerian migrants were the largest single group entering the country, largely via ocean ports.

These are the numbers:

• In 2015: out of 153,842 arrivals, 22,337 were from Nigeria;
• In 2016: out of 181,436 arrivals, 37,551 were from Nigeria;
• In 2017: out of  119,369 arrivals, 18,158 were from Nigeria.
• In the first six months of 2018 Nigerian arrivals numbered only 1,229.

The sharp decrease in 2018 is mainly due to the new closure policies regarding the migration flows, which was initiated in April 2017 by the previous Italian government and supported by the current one.

According to data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics, which is the main producer of official statistics in Italy, Nigerians living in country have risen from:

• 48,220 registered as of January 2012,
• to 88,527 in 2017,
• and to 106,069 in 2018.

“More closure creates only more illegality”

It seems incredulous that Jim, who has a legal permit to stay and work in the country, is still begging for money almost a decade since his arrival.

The only job he was ever able to secure, he tells IPS, was one selling drinks at the Stadio Olimpico. But that had been only for a few months, and the salary was incredibly low.

Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for IOM, tells IPS that something has to change in terms of integration policies.

“Today we are witnessing the management of immigration by European countries marked by closure. This is very wrong: we need to reopen the legal routes,” Di Giacomo says.

“Let’s not forget that an efficient immigration policy, must include everything, even forced repatriations. More closure creates only more illegality and consequently the impossibility of promoting and applying integration policies for those migrants, who do not have a legal permit to stay in Europe.”

In Italy, thousands of migrants struggle to find a regular job that will allow them to legalise their documents.

So in Jim’s case, the paradox is a bitter one. While he has legal rights to stay in Italy, he just cannot find employment.

And struggles to feed himself, let alone his wife and son who live back in Nigeria.

IPS asks him if he ever though about doing something illegal to earn money. But he says: “I am a good Christian, I could never do that.”

*Not his real name.

Excerpt:

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from some EU member countries. Credit: Ilaria Vechi/IPS.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Aug 2 2018 (IPS)

Thousands of migrant minors placed in reception facilities upon arrival in Italy, as a first step in identification and later relocation into other structures for asylum seekers, are untraceable and feared trafficked.

A report, Tiny invisible slaves 2018, released this week by the non-governmental organisation Save the Children, states that 4,570 minors migrating through Italy are untraceable as of May.

Once they escape the facilities, their vulnerable position—having no money, not knowing the language and being often traumatised after their trip to Italy—places them at the mercy of traffickers and exploiters.

Many of these children end up in networks of sexual exploitation, forced labour and enslavement. Save the Children reported that some girls are forced to perform survival sex—to prostitute themselves in order to pay the ‘passeurs’ to cross the Italian border or to pay for food or a place to sleep.

“I left Nigeria with a friend and once we arrived to Sabha (Libya) we were arrested,” Blessing, one of the victims, told Save the Children.

“I stayed there for three months and then I moved to Tripoli. For eight interminable months I was forced to prostitute myself in exchange for food,” she added.

Blessing then reported that her nightmare continued in Italy where she was sexually exploited by a compatriot. She ultimately was able to enter a protection programme thanks to Save the Children. But her story is a rare case of rescue as many other children find themselves enslaved with no end in sight.

According to testimonies collected by the NGO, minors leave reception facilities because they judge the processes of entering the child protection system as a useless slowing down towards the economic autonomy they aspire to and usually leave the centres a few days after identification.

This has been occurring largely in the southern regions of Italy.

But according to the report, “the flow of minors in transit through Italy to northern Europe is, by its own nature, difficult to quantify.” Though it noted that minors transiting through Italy between January and March, make up between 22 percent and 31 percent out of the total transitioning migrants across the country. The minors are mostly Eritrean (14 percent), Somalis (13 percent), Afghans (10 percent), Egyptians (9 percent) and Tunisians (8 percent).

“The fact that the European Union relocation programme was blocked in September 2017, has contributed in an important way to forcing children in transit to re-entrust themselves to traffickers, or to risk their own lives to cross borders, as well as it continues to happen for those minors who transit through the Italian north frontier with the aim of reaching the countries of northern Europe,” Roberta Petrillo, from the child protection department of Save the Children, Italy, told IPS.

The redistribution of asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, which are the main landing territories of migrants heading to Europe, was stopped mainly because of opposition to the refugee quotas from the EU member countries of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary.

The EU’s initial plan provided for the relocation of 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece to other European countries within two years. As of May, 12,690 and 21,999 migrants were relocated from Italy and Greece respectively. To date, the Czech Republic has accepted only 12 refugees, Slovakia 16, with Hungary and Poland having taken no refugees.

According to estimates from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), almost 10 million children and youth across the world were forced into slavery, sold and exploited, mainly for sexual and labour purposes in 2016.

They make up 25 percent of the over 40 million people who are trafficked, of which more than seven out of 10 are women and girls. According to the ILO estimates, nearly one million victims of sexual exploitation in 2016 were minors, while between 2012 and 2016, 152 million boys and girls aged between five and 17 were engaged in various forms of child labour. More than half of these activities were particularly dangerous for their own health.

“When we talk about data of this kind we must be very cautious because we are dealing with numbers that only concern the emergence of the phenomenon, without keeping track of the submerged data,” Petrillo added.

There were 30,146 registered victims of trafficking and exploitation in 2016 in the 28 EU countries with 1,000 of them minors.

However, according to 2016 figures from the ILO, 3.6 million people across Europe were reportedly modern day slaves.

According to the Alabama Human Trafficking Task Force, human trafficking is the second-largest criminal industry in the world, second only to the illegal drug trade. It is estimated to be an industry worth USD32 billion annually.

The most targeted

Nigerian and Romanian girls are amongst the most targeted by the trafficking networks.

According to Save the Children, for the journey that will take them to Italy, the Nigerian girls contract a debt between 20,000 and 50,000 euros that they can only hope to repay by undergoing forced prostitution.

Like their peers from Romania, they enter a mechanism of sexual exploitation from which they cannot get free easily.

While Nigerians escape mainly for security issues and political instability, Romanian girls flee their country because of a total lack of opportunities and economic autonomy there. Their deep economic deprivation makes them highly vulnerable and easy targets for traffickers, who deceive or coerce them to enter into networks of sexual exploitation. 

According to the Save the Children Report, in 2017 there were a total of 200 minor victims of trafficking and exploitation who were put into protection programmes. The vast majority of these, 196, were girls with about  93.5 percent Nigerian girls aged between 16 and 17 years.

In addition, almost half of the minors were sexually exploited 

Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy,  told IPS that migrant men were welcomed with open arms because they were useful for working under exploited conditions.

However, migrant women were welcome only because they were used for prostitution.

“By not guaranteeing legal and safe paths for those fleeing wars and persecution, by not organising and recognising the presence of migrant workers, we just do a favour to the criminal groups, who build real fortunes on trafficking in human beings,” Noury told IPS.

While Petrillo said that “the Italian and the EU legal framework is solid and a good one,” she cautioned that  “what is needed, instead, is a unitary intervention that closely links the issue of anti-trafficking reality with that of minors in transit. And we must be able to guarantee universal protection for the victims.”

The floating market at Ganvie village on Lake Nokoue near Cotonou, Benin. Many migrants use Benin as a launchpad before heading to North Africa or Europe. But some are choosing to remain. Credit: David Stanley/CC By 2.0

By Issa Sikiti da Silva
COTONOU, Benin, Jul 26 2018 (IPS)

Last year, Mohamed Keita returned home to Mali after living and working in Libya for six years. Eighteen months ago he was arrested by security forces in Libya as he and other migrants tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe via a makeshift boat. After spending a traumatising six months in jail, he was transported back to Mali.

But as soon as he arrived he immediately knew that it would be difficult for him to stay put.

Keita’s home is in the central poverty-stricken Mopti region where his entire village still does not have power.

While his parents now live in the country’s capital Bamako, “even in our family house in Bamako, running water and electricity are luxuries. And when it’s raining, flooding occurs and kills people. These kinds of things, including armed conflict and terrorism, force you to go far away to look for a better life and peace,” he says as he wipes the sweat that falls heavily from his face as he works on a construction site on the outskirts of Cotonou, a major city in Benin.“While we were waiting for the trip, we used to hear bad news of friends who had drowned at sea. Death stoked us while we waited for our turn... It was like waiting for Judgment Day.” Mohamed Keita.

Besides, he says, terrorism is still tearing the country apart, and peace and national reconciliation remain elusive.

The west African nation of Mali, which heads to the polls this Sunday Jul. 29, was caught in violent crisis in 2012 when a Tuareg group called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad began a fight for a separatist rule. However, AFP reported yesterday that despite recent attacks by jihadists and inter-ethnic violence, incumbent president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said there was “no war-mongering in Mali today.” He was elected in 2013 soon after French intervention to bring peace to the nation.

But as far as Keita was concerned, no real social or economic development has taken place since he left.

Had there been, the 26-year-old tells IPS, it would have enticed him to stay and plan his future. So instead he headed to Benin, another west African country. In Cotonou, a vibrant and thriving place, he shares a small room with six other sub-Saharan African migrants who are waiting to make the journey to North Africa and eventually to Europe.

Benin, new irregular migration hub?

The city is a far cry from his home village or even Bamako. Women from across the continent come here to buy local material that is highly sought after to make African dresses. Business is booming as the government doesn’t charge high taxes on small businesses.

Many also like it here because they consider xenophobia and police harassment to be non-existent. Last February, the government abolished short stay visas for 31 African countries in order to develop South-South cooperation.

Benin, a low-income country, has always been a transit route for west African migrants looking to make a fortune in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and Angola. It has also served as a stopping point for central African migrants looking to get to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and perhaps continue their journey to Europe.

According to a 2015 United Nations report on the country, 2.1 percent of the 11 million people here are migrants, the vast majority of who come from the neighbouring countries of Nigeria, Togo and Niger.

But this nation has always attracted sub-Saharan African traders looking for business opportunities. Its central market Dantokpa or Tokpa—which means market of snakes in the local language—is West Africa’s largest open-air business area.

“Cotonou is a good place to do business because you can earn up to 100 percent profit from selling everything you buy here,” Congolese trader Marthe Mavoungou tells IPS, as she is about to board a plane back to Brazzaville.

The country’s proximity to economic powerhouse Nigeria, also plays a role in the bustling business here as huge volumes of stock from Lagos port make their way to Benin. Items ranging from women’s bags, shoes and clothes, find their way onto local markets where they are sold cheaply.

Biggest mistake

Keita, a high school dropout, left Mali at 20 for Libya and worked as a menial labourer there. The experience was a difficult one.

“If you are black and living in North Africa…you get unfair treatment but you have nowhere to complain,” he explains.

Amid emotional abuse, exploitation and racial slurs proffered towards him almost on a daily basis, Keita kept telling himself that the experience  would come to an end once he boarded the boat to Europe.

But it was not to be.

“I was crying when we were arrested, and at the same time angry with myself for making what I thought was the biggest mistake of my life,” he says.

“The failed trip cost me 1,500 dollars, which represented all my savings from working in the Libyan construction sector,” he says, emotionally.

But his story is fortunate. While he may not have crossed to Europe as he wanted to, Keita, unlike thousands of others is still alive.

“While we were waiting for the trip, we used to hear bad news of friends who had drowned at sea. Death [stalked] us while we waited for our turn. Some migrants even began smoking drugs to kill the stress. It was like waiting for Judgment Day.”

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said this month that on just one weekend some 218 migrants lost their lives in two mass separate drownings. “I’ve just returned to Libya after a series of tragedies and the loss of hundreds of migrant lives including several babies,” IOM head William Lacy Swing reportedly said as he visited Libyan earlier this month. “My message is that all must focus on saving lives and protecting migrant rights.”

IOM states that this is the fifth year in a row that nearly 1,000 migrants have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean.

Nearly 48,000 asylum-seekers and migrants have reached Europe’s shores in the first six months of 2018, according to IOM figures.

Keita still thinks that those who make it to Europe are lucky. “But if you ask them about the things they endured before achieving their goal, they would tell you thousands of stories of misery, abuse and pain,” he says.

His own pain did not end after trying to leave Libya for Europe. He says he experienced terrible and painful things in jail, which he would rather not talk about.

“The TV images you see showing migrants crammed in one place under the scorching sun like sheep waiting to be taken to the abattoirs is only a tip of the iceberg,” he explains.

A report released in March by the U.N Human Rights Office estimates that 6,500 people are being held in official prisons while thousands more are in facilities run by the government or run by armed groups affiliated to the state. Earlier this year Doctors Without Borders said that some 800 migrants in Libya’s detention centres were living under worsening conditions.

Many migrants have, however, returned home thanks to IOM’s Voluntary Humanitarian Return (VHR) programme.

Some choose to stay

Ousmane Bangoura, who lived in Morocco for four years in a failed attempt to reach Spain, also lives in Cotonou where he sells used clothes in the city market Dantokpa.

His experience was a difficult one.

“Arabs hate blacks for no apparent reason and they call us derogatory names. Everybody is against you, including your neighbours. Besides, local media is also fuelling xenophobia through subjective and discriminatory reports,” Bangoura says.

But Bangoura, who is from Guinea-Conakry, tells IPS, that he will remain in Benin.

“I’m happy with what I’m currently doing, as I’m able to my life and send money home time to time to my ailing parents,” he says.

There seems to be a recent increase in the number of migrants flocking to Cotonou looking to get to North Africa, according to a local community leader.

Some observers firmly believe that the city could become another Agadez (the door of Sahara), a northern town of Niger, where the country’s security forces have been conducting an aggressive campaign to root out human smugglers and migrants waiting to go to Libya. The campaign, which has been welcomed by the European Union, has also seen stocks of weapons seized and a number of arms traders arrested.

Congolese migrant, Didier, and his friend Felix, from the Central African Republic, both recently arrived at Cotonou from Agadez. Didier tells IPS that human smugglers have descended on Cotonou.

“A man and a woman came to see us on Sunday, asking if we wanted to travel to Spain via Morocco,” Didier says.

“He said all the paperwork will be done here in Benin and that they will take us through Senegal and Mauritania. They were asking for USD700 for the trip to Morocco, and once you reach there, they will take you to their ‘agents’ who will charge you USD1,500 negotiable for the trip to Europe. I’m not yet ready, but I will go come or shine. Europe is every young African’s dream.”

But for Keita the dream of living and working in Europe hasn’t died. But he says he will do it formally, when the time is right. For now he is happy to remain in Benin and earn a living.