country:nigeria

#réfugiés #migrations #asile #dépopulation

#city_plaza #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Athènes #Grèce #solidarité #squat #auto-gestion #visualisation

Refugees can achieve so much if they’re not caged in isolated camps

Rooms were lying empty at the City Plaza hotel in Athens. Now it’s an autonomous hive where refugees are empowered

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ae5e94f2bd244a9582173797dc2a26607227acb7/0_46_960_576/master/960.jpg?w=620&q=20&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&dpr=2&s=42b5d21bc2ffc53a23c3b36d8efe5647#.jpg

« City Plaza Hotel will become your home in Athens » / Entre lieu de vie et espace politique, les enjeux d’appropriation d’un squat athénien

« Que vous soyez à Athènes pour affaires ou pour votre loisir, vous serez comme chez vous au City Plaza. »1 Cet extrait du site internet de l’hôtel City Plaza d’Athènes, non actualisé depuis sa fermeture en 2010, est une présentation à l’attention des touristes qui s’apprêtent à y séjourner quelques jours. Rénové grâce à des fonds de l’État octroyés à l’occasion des Jeux Olympiques de 2004 puis fermé après sa faillite sans indemnisation de ses employés, cet hôtel trois étoiles fait figure de symbole de la crise grecque. Huit ans plus tard, c’est un « chez-soi » (home) dénué de toute valeur marchande que le Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza, propose à ses nouveaux habitants. Le 22 avril 2016, une centaine de militants grecs et un groupe de réfugiés2 squattent le bâtiment pour fournir sur sept étages un logement à environ 350 réfugiés. Leur objectif est de montrer par un exemple concret et de grande envergure qu’une politique d’accueil solidaire au centre d’Athènes est possible. Ils placent en effet au cœur de leurs actions la critique « en pratique » (expression d’un local) de la politique migratoire de l’Union Européenne et du gouvernement grec, des conditions de vie dans les camps et des hotspots3. Pour cela, ils proposent en miroir un modèle incarné par l’appropriation d’un lieu commun et autogéré.

▻http://www.revue-urbanites.fr/city-plaza-athenes-squat

Greece’s Tower of Babel: An unusual place

City Plaza functions collectively with refugees and activists cooking, cleaning, and making decisions together.

From the outside, City Plaza Hotel might not look like much, just another shabby building in the Greek capital of Athens, neglected during the years of the economic crisis. Step inside its doors to find a unique space for hundreds of people from all over the world: refugees.

Their plan was never to stay in Greece. They had hopes of reaching northern Europe. But, once the “Balkan Route” closed in March 2016, those who had made the dangerous trip in rubber dinghies from Turkey had nowhere else to go.

That’s when activists in Athens intervened and occupied spaces such as City Plaza, a hotel that had been abandoned years earlier, to prevent the weary travellers from sleeping in overcrowded camps or, even worse, in the streets of Athens, as many who could not find shelter were forced to do.

Since it was occupied, City Plaza has become home to some 400 refugees and migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere. Unlike most refugee accommodations in Europe, City Plaza affords its guests a level of dignity they wouldn’t find elsewhere.

People have private rooms and their own bathrooms. It’s an unusual space - where most asylum centres are hierarchical and segregated based on nationality, City Plaza functions collectively, with refugees and activists cooking, cleaning, living and making decisions together.

In such a diverse space, things can easily get lost in translation. But people find a way to communicate, and when they can’t there are people such as Rabea, himself a refugee from Damascus, to make sure that Greek and international activists can communicate with the refugees and migrants living in City Plaza.

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2016/11/28/51f2814ae88a4f1d9009c19576a56d0d_18.jpg https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2016/11/28/9cad05b190c44d4cb498d58959ec16b6_18.jpg

City Plaza, la #fin...
Message reçu le 12.07.2019 de Vicky Skoumbi via la mailing-list de Migreurop:

Après 39 mois de fonctionnement l’occupation City Plaza, un hôtel athénien transformé en lieu de vie et d’hébergement pour réfugiés a fermé. City Plaza avait accueilli 2.500 réfugiés dans un espace exemplaire, géré collectivement par les solidaires et par les réfugiés eux-mêmes. L’évacuation a été programmée par le collectif Solidarity 2 refugees qui a été à l’origine de l’occupation. La décision de ne plus continuer l’occupation fut prise en mai 2018 et depuis juin de la même année City Plaza n’acceptait plus de nouveaux arrivants. D’après le communiqué mise en ligne sur FB, la décision fut prise pour trois raisons :

A) le refus de normaliser/légaliser une occupation qui s’est voulue un acte militant tandis que deux ordres successives d’évacuation du procureur restaient en attente.

B) Un manque grandissant des moyens et de forces vives ; il fallait que chaque nuit un service de sécurité de huit personnes soit de garde afin d’assurer la sécurité des réfugiés qui pouvaient à n’importe quel moment devenir la cible d’une attaque de l’Aube Dorée ou d’autres groupuscules d’extrême droite, la possibilité d’une intrusion de la propriétaire accompagnée de ses sbires étant toujours en ligne de mire.

C) Les élections et la formation d’un gouvernent de droite qui a déjà annoncé son intention d’y envoyer les CRS pour évacuer de force l’hôtel et en finir avec la soi-disant « anomie » de l’occupation ; ont précipité l’évacuation : il fallait protéger les migrants sans-papiers d’une arrestation qui pourrait être suivi d’un internement et d’une expulsion

Tous les résidents de City Plaza ont été relogés dans des bonnes conditions, soit à d’autres occupations, soit à des appartements.

Le collectif remercie tous ceux et celles ont soutenu d’une façon ou d’une autre et leur donne rendez-vous pour des nouveaux combats en commun

Voir leur communiqué en anglais
▻https://www.facebook.com/sol2refugeesen/posts/2117692658523066?__tn__=K-R

39 months City Plaza: the end of an era, the beginning of a new one. (here is the text in Greek ▻https://urlzs.com/dtFsv)

Yesterday, on 10th July 2019, the keys of squatted City Plaza were handed back to the former employees of the hotel, to whom the mobile equipment in the building belongs. All refugees living at City Plaza have been moved to safe housing within the city.

On 22 April 2016, the Economic and Political Refugee Solidarity Initiative squatted the empty City Plaza building with a two-fold goal: to create, on the one hand, a space of safety and dignity in which to house refugees in the centre of the city and, on the other, to create a centre of struggle against racism, borders, and social exclusion. For the freedom of movement and for the right to stay.

The decision to squat was taken at a critical political juncture. On 18th March 2016, one month before the squat opened, the EU-Turkey deal to restrict the movement of refugees to Europe was signed. It was the deal that marked the end of the “summer of migration” - the period which began in July 2015 when, under pressure from approximately one million people, the European borders “opened”. This was the deal that turned the islands of the Aegean into a sort of prison for migrants, and which turned mainland Greece into a trap for over 60,000 people. The SYRIZA-ANEL government, following its capitulation to the neoliberal management of the economic crisis, took on the the implementation of a policy of control, deterrence and discouragement of migration. With Frontex and NATO patrolling the Aegean, with detention centres such as Moria on the islands, with awful camps as the only policy for housing refugees on the mainland, by punishing solidarity and the struggle of refugees. During that time, the housing issue was very pressing. The refugees who had arrived in Athens were either homeless or were being housed in the awful camps of Elliniko, Malakasa, or the port of Piraeus, while hundreds of people slept in tents or cardboard boxes in city streets and squares.

It was while these were happening that a discussion began within the Economic and Political Refugee Solidarity Initiative, which led to the decision to squat City Plaza, a hotel on Acharnon street which remained shut for seven years. The decision had certain features of voluntarism, and was not justified by the forces in our disposal, nor by the state of the anti-authoritarian movement at the time. Yet it was a move which addressed the political situation and the great struggle of the refugees who had, over the previous months, opened the borders of Fortress Europe and thus won their right to freedom of movement. It also matched the massive and spontaneous social solidarity movement which developed along the length of the migration route.

City Plaza as an example of dignified housing, space for social solidarity and cooperation between locals and migrants.

From its inception, City Plaza was organized around two key goals:
– to create a space for safe and dignified housing for migrants in the centre of the city, a space of solidarity and cooperation between locals and migrants.
– to function as a centre of struggle in which political and social demands by migrants and locals will interweave and complement each other.

CP proved in practice that the state policy of “hospitality” towards refugees is a mixture of harshness, incompetence, and political expediency. Where the solidarity movement, without any funding from formal institutions, without any “experts” or employees, managed to create one of the best housing spaces in the centre of the city, the state continued to abide by the trapping of refugees in makeshift camps and tents in the mainland, and by imposing a regime of refuting the rights of refugees and detaining them in hot spots on the islands, at the threat of deportation.
This contrast was the key element which led to mass support for CP at the beginning of its operation, by individual activists, organizations/collectives of the left, as well as by people who joined the movement for the first time there. Of course, because of the ownership status of the hotel, there were several attacks “from the left” which, fully aligned with the narrative of the owner and the petty bourgeois rhetoric on the “supreme human right to property”, attempt to belittle the effort, by spreading conspiracy theories (ranging from claims that we’re being funded by Soros, SYRIZA, the German State, to claims that we traffic drugs, firearms, children, and sex workers), slandering the collective and the activists who are part of it.

City Plaza proved in practice that refugees and locals can live together when, instead of isolation, punishment, and hatred, there is solidarity, struggle, and community. At the opposite pole from the camps, located outside the cities and in awful conditions, CP managed, in a difficult neighbourhood, until recently patrolled by neonazis, to brighten the formerly dark corner between Acharnon and Katrivanou, by giving it the character of security truly valued by those from below: the security of dignified housing, community, solidarity, and vitality of the people selflessly fighting for better lives.

At the same time, dozens of people showed their solidarity around the world. Through their daily presence, their participation in shifts, positive attitude and a large-scale international campaign for the financial support of the project. Dozens of crates of food and other essentials were sent to Plaza, thousands of people and groups made donations to support the project, which relied solely on donations for its survival.

City Plaza also served as a centre for struggle. Aiming to internationally denounce the anti-refugee policies of the SYRIZA-ANEL government and the EU, we brought to the fore topics such as criminal responsibility for shipwrecks and loss of human life, the delay or obstruction of sea rescue, the practice of illegal pushbacks in Evros and the Aegean, the conditions of imprisonment in hotspots. City Plaza hosted dozens of open discussions on the border regime, racism, the struggle for rights, often featuring contributions by well-known intellectuals from around the world, such as Judith Butler, Angela Davis, David Harvey, Alain Badiou, Sandro Mezzandra, among others. Yet the goal was not just to highlight issues relating to migrant struggles, but also to link them to the struggles of locals. In the rallies for International Worker’s Day, the Polytechnic Uprising, antifascist and feminist protests, the City Plaza block was present throughout the three years.

The City Plaza community: Practices, Rights, Cooperation.

The answer to the question of what City Plaza is is known to the thousands of people who passed through its doors: CP is a project for the realisation of a conception of everyday life which aims to empower those “from below”, in the constitution of a space of freedom, which practically realises an aspect of the society we envision.

Its mode of operation expressed a politics of everyday life which is in opposition to the dominant model of managing migration, especially to its “NGOisation”. At the core of this voluntary contribution of time, effort, and emotion was not the “provision of services” to “the vulnerable” but the attempt to combat insecurity and fear, to empower and encourage confidence and trust in the collective. Help to refugees was re-politicised - and became solidarity and common struggle. Self-organisation, shared responsibility and decision making were central, as was a constant reflection on the inequalities permeating relations within the project: localisation, class, gender, language, education, etc.

Despite the inherent contradictions and difficulties, the collective experience of organising everyday life was the foundation for building a strong community of solidarity. At the same time, in this context, and in contrast to dominant victimising narratives, refugees and migrants became dynamic subjects with an active role on social and political life.

Daily life at CP was based on the principle of participatory organisation and collective decision making and operations, processes particularly complex in a community of 350 people speaking different languages, and with different ethnic, class, and social backgrounds, and different plans for the future. Regular coordination meetings became the space in which equal discussion took place on issues of operation and organisation, while House meetings were - especially in the beginning - a real lesson in how we can and should discuss, operate, and co-implement, as refugees and as locals. The organisation of residents and solidarians into working groups was a component of organising the project but also an essential basis for developing personal and political relationships amongst ourselves. The working groups were: Reception, Education, Children’s Activities, Health Centre, Kitchen, Security, Economics, Cleaning, Communications, as well as a self-organized Women’s Space.

In its 36 months of operation, City Plaza hosted over 2,500 refugees from 13 different countries. About 100 of the 126 rooms of the hotel hosted 350 refugees at any one time, while the remaining 26 either served as communal spaces (classrooms, women’s space, storage space) or to host solidarians from around the world. It was, after all, City Plaza’s political choice to not serve as a housing space “for” refugees but as a space of cohabitation and shared everyday life.

Yet we will not provide statistics referring to countries of origin, ages or ‘vulnerable” cases. In contrast, we will provide “statistics” on the enormous amount of resources that the movement was able to mobilise in order to keep City Plaza going:

812,250 hot meals were prepared by the kitchen team

74,500 work hours on security shifts

28,630 hours of shifts at reception

5,100 hours of language teaching and creative educational activities

* 69,050 rolls of toilet paper

However, the most important things cannot be counted. They have to do with human relationships, mutual respect and solidarity, emotions and experiences, optimism born out of common struggle.

The end of an era, the beginning of a new one

Such a project demands enormous resources. It is not a political squat which can stay closed for a couple of days in August without any problems. It is a space which demands a daily commitment, responsibility, and presence. Besides, the way we see it, self-organization is not automatic. To the contrary, it requires many hours of work, often endless processes of shared decision making, and interminable difficulties. In other words, self-organization and solidarity are not theory. They are action in the here and now. Action full of contradictions and life’s problems. In a society in which authoritarianism, war, capitalism, and competition between the subjugated is considered normal, while multiple divisions and hierarchies permeate us all, because of our origins, genders, and class backgrounds, self-organisation is not a slogan. It is a struggle.

Unfortunately, as often happens in many self-organized projects, enthusiasm, commitment, and participation dwindle over time - especially when circumstances are so demanding. The fact that the overwhelming majority of City Plaza residents are in transit made it impossible to hand the operation of the squat completely over to the refugees as most of them, sooner or later, left for Europe. At the same time, the material resources required for a project of such size - for food, hygiene products, medications, building maintenance - became harder to come by, despite the fact that comrades throughout Europe have demonstrated extraordinary commitment.

On the basis of all of the above, shortly before City Plaza celebrated its two-year anniversary, and following calls to collectives and spaces which supported the project from its inception, there opened a difficult and contradictory discussion on how long City Plaza can carry on, or whether and how it should adapt, given that we did not wish to see the project decline. There was a dilemma on whether we would move towards the direction of “normalising/ legalising” the squat or towards completing the project, while also looking for new ways to keep the community it created alive in a different context.
The first option was found to be politically undesirable, as it clashes with City Plaza’s character as a political alternative to NGOisation, and leads to a disconnect between the issues of safe housing and collective struggle and rights demands more generally.

We decided that, despite it being a difficult choice, City Plaza should rightly close the way it began and operated: as a political project, by protecting the central element which turned it into a example, that is organisation from below, safe and dignified living, community of struggle, and addressed to society as a whole.

During the House meeting of 26th May 2018, we jointly decided on this direction - not without contradictions and disagreements - and there was an extensive discussion about how to implement such a decision. Beginning in June 2018, City Plaza did not accept new residents, while there was a collective commitment that the project would not wind down until every resident had found acceptable accommodation. This commitment was not at all simple to implement. The wider circumstances of dealing with the refugee question - both from the point of view of the SYRIZA-ANEL government and from the point of view of NGOs, did not provide an opportunity to provide institutionally guaranteed housing to residents, while other spaces and squats could not house such a large number of refugees, despite positive attempts to support this.

One year on, and while the project was winding down, the expected change in the political landscape, with the imminent re-election of New Democracy, made it imperative to once more address the pace at which the project is progressing towards its close, taking into account the fact that, over the past several months, several refugees had gradually moved to safe housing. Plaza has two pending court orders for its evacuation, while high-ranking New Democracy members made daily references to the “destruction of private property” and the “lawlessness” at City Plaza. In this respect, evacuation could be used as a deterrent, while many refugees, especially those with no fixed legal status, could face disproportionate consequences (deportation, detention, etc.). Even though, for some, an evacuation by New Democracy could be seen as a “heroic exit”, for which few political explanations would need to be given, nevertheless most City Plaza residents would be put in danger, especially in view of their already vulnerable and unstable status.

This reconfirmed the decision to bring City Plaza to a close, on a collective basis and in our own terms. All refugees found safe housing. In the almost eighteen months between the decision to shut down and its implementation, most refugees moved on towards Northern Europe. Out of those who remained at City Plaza, some had the opportunity to rent their own place, as they had since found employment, while others still resorted to collective solutions. Through shared spaces and other housing projects which we have already put in place, along with the impossibly persistent network of all the people who actively participated in the project (refugees and solidarians), the community will continue to exist long after the building has been abandoned.

City Plaza’s closure is linked to the wider movement’s inability to develop effective forms of organization, mobilisation, and discourse on the refugee questions, which match the demands of the time. It is true that many parts of the wider social movement decided on different degrees of involvement, being unable to support the project and/or develop similar ones, which would galvanise our efforts through a new dynamic. This position is not apportioning blame, but highlights the project as part of a wider social and political process, reflecting the ideological-political and organisational crisis within the movement, with which we will have to deal in the next phase.

City Plaza was an invaluable political experience for all who took part, but also a political event far greater than the sum of its parts. Without exaggeration, CP was the pan-European symbol which concentrated resistance to the racist and repressive migration regime of the EU, following the closure of the borders after the EU-Turkey deal was signed. Equally, it served as a strong counter-example at a time of pessimism and demobilisation for the left, and a time of resurgence for the far right.

City Plaza was a great struggle which, like all great struggles, cannot be counted as a clear victory or a clear defeat. It is a chapter in antiracist and migration struggles and, at the same time, an experiment in social movements, an unexpected mix of different needs, sociopolitical, gendered, and class experiences. This meeting, like every mixture, needs some time for the multiple experiences to settle and leave their trace on our individual and collective consciousness.In this milieu, new forms of resistance, struggle, and relationships of cooperation and solidarity will form - in Athens as well as in the dozens of cities at which City Plaza residents will arrive, as well as in the daily struggles against the barbarism or racism and repressive policies. Σ

The City Plaza collective was, from the beginning, aware of its contradictory makeup. The alternative it proposed could not but me incomplete, dependent on the circumstances in which it was born and the subjective capacities of the movement and its people, with their brains, hearts, and bodies. Yet it was also restricted, like every struggle for rights and equal participation, which impinges on the power of capitalist exploitation, the imposition and reproduction of nationalist, racist, and gendered hierarchies and divisions.

City Plaza is a link in a chain of struggles for social emancipation. A peculiar struggle, as it began from the small and the everyday, from how to cook the food and how to clean the building, and extended to resistance to the border regime and to multiple levels of discrimination. For those of us who took part in it, CP was an opportunity to redefine and to reflect on political thought and practice, relations of power, everyday life, cohabitation and its terms, self-organisation and its contradictions. We say goodbye to S(p)iti Plaza with one promise: to transfer this rich experience, to continue to enrich and broaden the ways and the places of common struggle.

Solidarity will win!

#hypocrisie #Libye #esclavagisme #esclavage #migrations #asile #réfugiés #UE #EU #politique_migratoire

La réponse hypocrite de l’#union_européenne face à l’esclavagisme en Libye.
Un terme géographique ne réponds jamais.

The war on smugglers

The “discovery” of the video has ignited the press and a consuming public in need of symbolism and scapegoats, a long-standing orientalist trope of Arab slave auctions, which European and African policy makers are now making work for their own objectives. The EU’s primary means to end the “migration crisis” remains an imperial, pink, ham-fisted attempt to militarily disrupt smuggling networks or what they call, Reagan-style, the “war on smugglers.” Watch the not-so-subtle encouragement in this direction apparent in this more recent CNN piece, reporting on France’s “urgent” demand to the UN to consider “sanctions,” and failing that, a more forceful intervention to stop migrants “being sold between human trafficking gangs.”
To intervene (again), the European branch of NATO needs to plug into a narrative that can find legitimacy in the western press and a sub-section of first world and global middle classes. The revived “slave auctions” being stomped out through a new western moral and military show of force is a tried and tested avenue for this — a cathartic one popularized amongst others by the irrelevant tweeting of aging rapper LL Cool J (“Remove the slave holders by force”).
Smugglers are the only ticket out of the country for the estimated half a million Nigerian migrants “stranded” in Libya and its detention centers. Except the IOM itself, a UN organization funded largely by the EU, whose renewed mission is to deflect the route to Europe by offering up anything from 400 to 7000 euros to any illegal “economic” migrants willing to be repatriated or return. This counter-payment ecosystem has even led to the rise of scammers posing as the IOM, promising “visa facilitation and transportation assistance, resettlement opportunities as well as job openings and recruitment abroad,” which in the eyes of most migrants is a better try than going back home broke with nothing to show. It also explains why more people have opted for the service of smugglers — and probably fallen for these scams — than have taken up the IOM’s offer of repatriation.
A prominent figure of “Nigerian twitter” tweeted a Facebook post (a much more popular and less elite-laden platform in Nigeria than Twitter) written by one Ephraim Okonkwo, who reminds everyone: “If you want to help Libya slaves/immigrants, don’t bring them back home. Help them reach their destination in Europe. There’s a very good reason they left home in the first place.” The tweet is followed by a provocation of the avatar Nigerian Troll: “Please run away. Don’t let this Libya propaganda discourage you.” This is a common sentiment I encountered on the streets of Lagos and elsewhere in West Africa: “Of course I want to go to Europe,” “You must suffer for greener pastures,” “Libya is bad but not that bad,” “One merely must pass through quickly.”
As almost no long-term, independent investigations have been possible in Libya in recent years, it is not clear if conditions have worsened. I believe my impressions from 2015 (also here) are still valid, and so is the new academic research of Paolo Campana. His research is based on the wiretapped mobile phone of heterogeneous smugglers who used the Libya route in 2013-2014. He suggests that that there is solid empirical evidence that there is a “clear separation between actors involved in the provision of smuggling services” from those involved “in kidnapping for ransom and in the ‘management’ of detention centres.” This “goes against narratives that conflate these separate sets of activities.”

►http://africasacountry.com/2018/02/the-war-on-smugglers
#retour_volontaire

Libia, ritorno all’inferno

A fronte dei 173 mila migranti sbarcati nei primi undici mesi del 2016 nel nostro paese, quest’anno ne sono arrivati 117 mila. 55 mila in meno. «La luce in fondo al tunnel», dice Minniti. Ma dove sono e cosa sono costretti a subire quei 55 mila migranti che non sono arrivati in Italia?

▻https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/anteprima/2017/12/22/news/libia_ritorno_all_inferno-184903632
#pull-back

L’ONU estime que le trafic d’êtres humains est en hausse en Libye

Le trafic d’êtres humains est en augmentation en Libye, selon un rapport d’experts de l’ONU, qui estime que les forces libyennes aident des groupes rebelles dans leur contrôle des routes migratoires.

▻https://www.voaafrique.com/a/traffic-d-etres-humains-en-hausse-en-libye-selon-l-onu/4240784.html

Dopo la Libia, l’inferno è in Italia: le donne nigeriane di #Castel_Volturno

A Castel Volturno le donne nigeriane arrivano dopo essere passate dalla Libia. Qui le aspetta la paura del «juju», la prostituzione nelle case chiuse, lo sfruttamento. Finché non finiscono di pagare il debito che hanno contratto per arrivare in Italia. Sara Manisera e Federica Mameli sono state a parlare con loro nelle «connection house» di Castel Volturno.

http://openmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DSC8293-800x400.jpg

▻http://openmigration.org/analisi/dopo-la-libia-linferno-e-in-italia-le-donne-nigeriane-di-castel-voltu

UNHCR expresses concern over lack of rescue capability in Mediterranean, but condones Libyan coast guard pull back operations

While UNHCR rightly calls for a change in EU practices, it fails to acknowledge or address the serious problems with the Libyan coast guard’s pull back practices in Libyan territorial waters – practices enabled and funded by the EU. UNHCR’s latest statement on this subject condones EU-funded Libyan coast guard pull back practices.

From Jeff Crisp (@JFCrisp): “A simple question for UNHCR and IOM: Should asylum seekers who leave Libya by boat have an opportunity to submit an application for refugee status elsewhere, rather than being summarily intercepted and forcibly returned to and detained in the country of departure? Because UNHCR’s global policy says: ‘persons rescued or intercepted at sea cannot be summarily turned back or otherwise returned to the country of departure, including in particular where to do so would deny them a fair opportunity to seek asylum.’”

UNHCR’s statement: “UNHCR continues to be very concerned about the legal and logistical restrictions that have been placed on a number of NGOs wishing to conduct search and rescue (SAR) operations, including the Aquarius. These have had the cumulative effect of the Central Mediterranean currently having no NGO vessels conducting SAR. Should NGO rescue operations on the Mediterranean cease entirely we risk returning to the same dangerous context we saw after Italy’s Mare Nostrum naval operation ended in 2015 and hundreds of people died in an incident on the central Mediterranean Sea. UNHCR welcomes the rescue efforts of the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG), as without them more lives would have been lost. Nonetheless, with the LCG now having assumed primary responsibility for search and rescue coordination in an area that extends to around 100 miles, the LCG needs further support. Any vessel with the capability to assist search and rescue operations should be allowed to come to the aid of those in need. UNHCR reiterates that people rescued in international waters (i.e. beyond the 12 nautical miles of the territorial waters of Libya) should not be brought back to Libya where conditions are not safe. The largest proportion of deaths have been reported in crossings to Italy, which account for more than half of all deaths reported this year so far, despite Spain having become the primary destination of those newly arrived. More than 48, 000 people have arrived there by sea, compared to around 22,000 in Italy and 27,000 in Greece. There is an urgent need to break away from the current impasses and ad-hoc boat-by-boat approaches on where to dock rescued passengers. UNHCR reiterates that in recent months, together with IOM, we have offered a regional solution that would provide clarity and predictability on search and rescue operations.”

▻https://migrantsatsea.org/2018/11/12/week-in-review-11-november-2018

A-t-on des données sur le nombre de « pledge » suivi d’effet ?

on peut logiquement penser (espérer) qu’il y a un suivi à ces deux initiatives et des comptes-rendus à venir. Affaires #à_suivre
▻http://afr100.org
▻http://www.bonnchallenge.org

Et voilà le type de marchandage auquel il faudra s’attendre... Ici, un article publié dans le Jerusalem Post... et parle évidemment de renvois depuis #Israël vers le Rwanda... à prendre avec les pincettes... mais débat intéressant

Rwanda says no to migrant deportation

Rwanda recently declared that it is willing to host as many as 30,000 African migrants currently trapped in Libya and being sold openly in modern-day slave markets. A tiny, densely populated African country recovering from the trauma of genocide, Rwanda was the first country to offer asylum to these unfortunate victims of human traffickers.

Contrary to reports in Israel that Israel had already signed a formal agreement with Rwanda, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwaboo in an interview this week with Rwanda’s New Times noted that Rwanda and Israel are still negotiating the conditions for accepting Israel’s African asylum seekers.

Mushikiwaboo made it clear that Rwanda would not accept forced migration from Israel. “We have had discussions with Israel on receiving some of the immigrants and asylum seekers from this part of Africa who are willing to come to Rwanda,” he noted. “If they are comfortable to come here, we would be willing to accommodate them.” Rwanda offered to host 10,000 African asylum seekers from Israel.

▻http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Rwanda-says-no-to-migrant-deportation-515819

#israfrique

Amnesty: EU-AU plan to help refugees in Libya ’unrealistic’

The plan to evacuate refugees stuck in Libya’s camps will not work in practice, says Franziska Vilmar of the German branch of Amnesty International. It has only been designed to help the EU shirk its responsibilities.

▻http://www.dw.com/en/amnesty-eu-au-plan-to-help-refugees-in-libya-unrealistic/a-41626514?maca=en-Twitter-sharing

Nigerian returnees from Libya narrate tales of abuse, violence

https://i.onthe.io/vllkyt69qlelj8h2q.94f7af30.jpg

#Nigeria #réfugiés_nigérians #abus #violence

« Je ne voulais pas mourir » : ces migrants qui ont choisi de rentrer chez eux

Ils sont trois. Trois parmi tant d’autres, plus de 300 au total. Issa, Mamadou et Abdou* viennent de Conakry, en Guinée, ont tenté leur chance pour passer en Europe via le Mali puis l’Algérie ou la Libye, avant de finalement renoncer et de rentrer chez eux, pour « ne pas mourir ». Depuis quelques jours, ils sont de retour à Agadez, le corps et l’esprit meurtri. Reportage.

▻http://www.jeuneafrique.com/503012/societe/je-ne-voulais-pas-mourir-ces-migrants-qui-ont-choisi-de-rentrer-chez-e

One year of EU partnership with IOM: migrants protection and reintegration in Africa

The objective was clear: to respond to the urgent protection needs and unacceptable loss of life of migrants along the Central Mediterranean migration route while addressing the challenges faced by returning migrants and their communities in countries of origin.

Fourteen countries have been involved: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. And so far, nearly 20 000 vulnerable migrants have been assisted through this initiative.

“Libya… not easy to come and not easy to leave”, a group of fellow stranded Nigerians warned Debbie, probably too late.

Debbie is one of the 15000 migrants that have been voluntarily returned to their countries thanks to the joint European Union and UN Migration agency’s effort launched a year ago to save lives and improve conditions for migrants along the migration routes and for those stranded in Libya.

She dreamt of becoming a fashion designer and a lady from her church told her she could earn more money as a tailor in Libya than in Nigeria. So Debbie paid a smuggler to cross the desert. Many of her companions died along the route. When she finally got to Libya she was arrested at the hospital because she did not have travel documents. She was there to give birth to her twin babies and only one survived.

Through the joint initiative, Debbie was offered a flight home to Nigeria, sewing machines and material to launch her fashion designer dream.

▻https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/37353/one-year-eu-partnership-iom-migrants-protection-and-reintegration-africa
#retour_volontaire

L’évacuation des migrants en Libye fait consensus, pas la facture

Les pays africains et européens ont adopté une déclaration conjointe spéciale sur la Libye et affirmé vouloir rapatrier les migrants bloqués dans leurs pays d’origine. Mais la question de l’addition a soigneusement été évitée.

http://www.euractiv.fr/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/11/EU_Africa-summit_CREDITLenan-Koula_EPA-800x450.jpg

Juste pour montrer jusqu’à quel point c’est hypocrite, voici une vidéo qui date de 2015 (et plus précisément, elle a été publiée le 15 septembre 2015) :
Detained by Militias : Libya’s Migrant Trade (Part 1)

In a desperate bid to seek a better life in Europe, thousands of refugees and migrants leave the shores of Libya and cross the perilous Mediterranean Sea every month. Over 2,000 people have died making the journey in 2015 alone. The routes to and journey through Libya are also dangerous, however, and since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, the country has struggled to achieve and maintain stability. Porous desert borders, rival fighters, and weak governance have left much of Libya in complete chaos. With militias controlling large swathes of land, their attentions have turned to the people that cross their territories. The fighters assert they are bringing order to the country as they detain the refugees, yet these people’s lives have become valuable commodities to the militias as they try to solidify their positions in the country. VICE News secured exclusive access to a camp outside Tripoli, run by a militia that has seized hundreds of migrants. Food is scarce, dehydration and disease is rife, and control comes in the form of whips and warning shots. The militia claims to have the migrants’ interests at heart, but what emerges is a very different story. In part one of a two-part series, VICE News examines how Libya is struggling with the Mediterranean migrant crisis, where state-run detention centers are overcrowded and violent, and how government immigration controls are outsourced to militias, where they detain migrants en masse.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3f380cYlPM

Die Externalisierung der humanitären Grenze. Das Beispiel der ‚Unterstützung freiwilliger Rückkehr‘ durch die IOM in Marokko

En prenant l’exemple du programme de l’aide au retour volontaire, cet article analyse les pratiques ambivalentes et les significations contradictoires de la gestion de la migration au-delà des frontières extérieures de l’Europe. La reconstitution de la mise en œuvre controversée de ce programme par l’Organisation Internationale pour la Migration (OIM) au Maroc permet de montrer le développement de frontières humanitaires anticipées. Le régime d’aide qui en résulte ne répond pas tant aux besoins des migrant.es vulnérables qu’à ceux de l’OIM elle-même, qui cherche à se positionner comme un acteur crédible méritant d’être subventionné dans le domaine concurrentiel en expansion de la politique migratoire. Dans le même temps, cette gestion de la migration au nom de l’humanitarisme contribue à (re)stabiliser le régime frontalier européen en crise et favorise sa consolidation le long des routes migratoires. Bien que ce programme soit présenté comme une action humanitaire apolitique pour le bien de migrant.es vulnérables, sa mise en œuvre au Maroc est non seulement le résultat, mais aussi l’objet de conflits politiques actuels autour des frontières extérieures de l’Europe.

▻http://journals.openedition.org/trajectoires/2372

Thousands of migrants return home safely from Libya as part of UN-supported programme

Since last November, 10,171 migrants have safely returned from Libya, the United Nations migration agency announced Tuesday, crediting the achievement to a scale up of its #Voluntary_Humanitarian_Return (#VHR) programme.

https://news.un.org/en/sites/news.un.org.en/files/styles/un_news_full_width/public/thumbnails/image/2018/01/IOM-flight-625.jpg?itok=ajR2XIF9#.jpg

Compile #Israfrique:
►https://seenthis.net/messages/685758

Nigeria–Libyen retour: Ein Flüchtling kehrt zurück

Für den Traum von Europa hat der Anstreicher Isaac Nigeria verlassen. Nach höllischen Monaten in Libyen gibt er auf und kehrt, von Versprechungen der EU gelockt, in seine Heimat zurück. Wie erlebt er dort seine Ankunft?

https://img.nzz.ch/S=W1000/O=75/https://nzz-img.s3.amazonaws.com/2018/8/30/928ee3e1-34e0-4e39-ab8b-f00d6f38d021.jpeg

En 2019 le Rwanda semble dire oui à la proposition...
Rwanda to receive over 500 migrants from Libya
►https://seenthis.net/messages/796723

Archive 2017, pour compléter le fil de la discussion.
Reçu avec ce commentaire de @pascaline :

Le Rwanda dit non aux expulsions, pas non au fait d’accueillir des demandeurs d’asile, c’est pas pareil

Et c’est en effet une différence importante. Merci @pascaline.

Rwanda Offers to Host African Migrants Stranded in Libya

In an unusual gesture that could partly reverse a more familiar northward odyssey toward Europe, Rwanda offered on Thursday to house or help repatriate some of the thousands of African migrants being held in Libya and reportedly auctioned there as slaves.

A statement from the country’s Foreign Ministry said Rwanda was “horrified” that “African men women and children who were on the road to exile have been held and turned into slaves.”

“Given Rwanda’s political philosophy and our own history, we cannot remain silent when human beings are being mistreated and auctioned off like cattle,” the statement said. The evocation of Rwanda’s history apparently referred to bloodletting in 1994 when more than 800,000 people perished in an ethnically driven genocide.

“We may not be able to welcome everyone but our door is wide open,” the Foreign Ministry said.

The statement did not say how many people might be taken in by Rwanda, a small, landlocked country of 12 million in east-central Africa that ranks as one of the continent’s most densely populated.
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But Moussa Faki Mahamat, the newly appointed head of the African Union, the continent’s biggest representative body, said on Twitter that Rwanda had offered to resettle as many as 30,000 migrants.

Mr. Mahamat said he was “deeply appreciative” of the offer.

Libya has in recent years become a leading entrepôt for migrants from Africa seeking passage to Italy in vessels operated by smugglers. The migrants have long been known to live in squalid conditions as they wait to board ramshackle and unseaworthy vessels. Thousands have drowned when the boats sank or capsized. Many others have reached Italy or been rescued on the way.

Since CNN broadcast footage of bidding and the sale of African migrants in Libya, an international outcry has gathered in volume.

On Monday, António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, said he was horrified by the images.

“Slavery has no place in our world, and these actions are among the most egregious abuses of human rights and may amount to crimes against humanity,” Mr. Guterres said in a statement.

Mr. Guterres said the reported auction of slaves “also reminds us of the need to address migration flows in a comprehensive and humane manner,” including “enhanced international cooperation in cracking down on smugglers and traffickers and protecting the rights of victims.”

Last weekend, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Libyan Embassy in Paris chanting, “Put an end to the slavery and concentration camps in Libya.”

Many of the African migrants in Libya began their journeys in West Africa or the Horn of Africa to escape poverty and upheaval. According to the International Organization for Migration, almost 9,000 migrants have been helped to return to their home countries this year.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/world/africa/rwanda-libya-migrants.html

–-------------

Rwanda offers refuge to enslaved Libya migrants
Rwanda has offered to give refuge to around 30,000 African migrants stuck in Libya often in enslaved conditions.

It comes in the wake of a video, released by CNN last week, showing men being auctioned off as farm workers.

“Given our own history... we cannot remain silent when human beings are being mistreated and auctioned off like cattle,” the foreign ministry said.

Hundreds of thousands of Africans travel through Libya every year as they try to make their way to Europe.

They are often held by smugglers and forced to work for little or no money.

During Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu were massacred in 100 days while most countries did little to help.

“Rwanda, like the rest of the world, was horrified by the images of the tragedy currently unfolding in Libya, where African men, women and children who were on the road to exile, have been held and turned into slaves,” the foreign ministry statement said.

Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said Rwanda was a small country but it would find space.

She told the pro-government New Times newspaper that Rwanda was in talks with African Union (AU) Commission to determine how to intervene and resettle them.

“What I expect and know is that Rwandans will welcome these people. As Rwandans we are sensitive to people who are helpless and have no way of protecting themselves. It is something that is deep in ourselves, we take pride in human beings,” the paper quotes her as saying.

The minister also said negotiations were also continuing with Israel about accommodating African migrants seeking asylum there.

Last week, the AU expressed outrage after the footage emerged appearing to show slave markets in Libya.

Youths from Niger and other sub-Saharan countries were seen being sold to buyers for about $400 (£300) at undisclosed locations in Libya.

In April, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it had gathered evidence of slavery in Libya.

Smugglers hold migrants for ransom and if their families could not pay, they were sold off at different prices depending on their qualifications, an IOM official in Libya said.

▻https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42095629

How global university rankings are changing higher education

EARLIER this month Peking University played host to perhaps the grandest global gathering ever of the higher-education business. Senior figures from the world’s most famous universities—Harvard and Yale, Oxford and Cambridge among them—enjoyed or endured a two-hour opening ceremony followed by a packed programme of mandatory cultural events interspersed with speeches lauding “Xi Jinping thought”. The party was thrown to celebrate Peking University’s 120th birthday—and, less explicitly, China’s success in a race that started 20 years ago.

In May 1998 Jiang Zemin, China’s president at the time, announced Project 985, named for the year and the month. Its purpose was to create world-class universities. Nian Cai Liu, a professor of polymeric materials science and engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, got swept up in this initiative. “I asked myself many questions, including: what is the definition of and criteria for a world-class university? What are the positions of top Chinese universities?” Once he started benchmarking them against foreign ones, he found that “governments, universities and stakeholders from all around the world” were interested. So, in 2003, he produced the first ranking of 500 leading global institutions. Nobody, least of all the modest Professor Liu, expected the Shanghai rankings to be so popular. “Indeed, it was a real surprise.”

People are suckers for league tables, be they of wealth, beauty, fame—or institutions of higher education. University rankings do not just feed humanity’s competitive urges. They are also an important source of consumer intelligence about a good on which people spend huge amounts of time and money, and about which precious little other information is available. Hence the existence of national league tables, such as US News & World Report’s ranking of American universities. But the creation of global league tables—there are now around 20, with Shanghai, the Times Higher Education (THE) and QS the most important—took the competition to a new level. It set not just universities, but governments, against each other.

When the Shanghai rankings were first published, the “knowledge economy” was emerging into the global consciousness. Governments realised that great universities were no longer just sources of cultural pride and finishing schools for the children of the well-off, but the engines of future prosperity—generators of human capital, of ideas and of innovative companies.

The rankings focused the minds of governments, particularly in countries that did badly. Every government needed a few higher-educational stars; any government that failed to create them had failed its people and lost an important global race. Europe’s poor performance was particularly galling for Germany, home of the modern research university. The government responded swiftly, announcing in 2005 an Exzellenzinitiative to channel money to institutions that might become world-class universities, and has so far spent over €4.6bn ($5.5bn) on it.

Propelled by a combination of national pride and economic pragmatism, the idea spread swiftly that this was a global competition in which all self-respecting countries should take part. Thirty-one rich and middle-income countries have announced an excellence initiative of some sort. India, where world rankings were once regarded with post-colonial disdain, is the latest to join the race: in 2016 the finance minister announced that 20 institutions would aim to become world-class universities. The most generously funded initiatives are in France, China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The most unrealistic targets are Nigeria’s, to get at least two universities in the world’s top 200, and Russia’s, to get five in the world’s top 100, both by 2020.

The competition to rise up the rankings has had several effects. Below the very highest rankings, still dominated by America and western Europe—America has three of the THE’s top five slots and Britain two this year—the balance of power is shifting (see chart). The rise of China is the most obvious manifestation. It has 45 universities in the Shanghai top 500 and is now the only country other than Britain or America to have two universities in the THE’s top 30. Japan is doing poorly: its highest-ranked institution, the University of Tokyo, comes in at 48 in the THE’s table. Elsewhere, Latin America and eastern Europe have lagged behind.

The rankings race has also increased the emphasis on research. Highly cited papers provide an easily available measure of success, and, lacking any other reliable metric, that is what the league tables are based on. None of the rankings includes teaching quality, which is hard to measure and compare. Shanghai’s is purely about research; THE and QS incorporate other measures, such as “reputation”. But since the league tables themselves are one of its main determinants, reputation is not an obviously independent variable.

Hard times

The research boom is excellent news for humanity, which will eventually reap the benefits, and for scientific researchers. But the social sciences and humanities are not faring so well. They tend to be at a disadvantage in rankings because there are fewer soft-science or humanities journals, so hard-science papers get more citations. Shanghai makes no allowance for that, and Professor Liu admits that his ranking tends to reinforce the dominance of hard science. Phil Baty, who edits the THE’s rankings, says they do take the hard sciences’ higher citation rates into account, scoring papers by the standards of the relevant discipline.

The hard sciences have benefited from the bounty flowing from the “excellence initiatives”. According to a study of these programmes by Jamil Salmi, author of “The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities”, all the programmes except Taiwan’s focused on research rather than teaching, and most of them favoured STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). This is no doubt one of the reasons why the numbers of scientific papers produced globally nearly doubled between 2003 and 2016.

The rankings may be contributing to a deterioration in teaching. The quality of the research academics produce has little bearing on the quality of their teaching. Indeed, academics who are passionate about their research may be less inclined to spend their energies on students, and so there may be an inverse relationship. Since students suffer when teaching quality declines, they might be expected to push back against this. But Ellen Hazelkorn, author of “Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education”, argues that students “are buying prestige in the labour market”. This means “they want to go to the highest-status university possible”—and the league tables are the only available measure of status. So students, too, in effect encourage universities to spend their money on research rather than teaching.

The result, says Simon Marginson, Oxford University’s incoming professor of higher education, is “the distribution of teaching further down the academic hierarchy”, which fosters the growth of an “academic precariat”. These PhD students and non-tenured academics do the teaching that the star professors, hired for their research abilities, shun as a chore. The British government is trying to press universities to improve teaching, by creating a “teaching-excellence framework”; but the rating is made up of a student-satisfaction survey, dropout rates and alumni earnings—interesting, but not really a measure of teaching quality. Nevertheless, says Professor Marginson, “everybody recognises this as a problem, and everybody is watching what Britain is doing.”

A third concern is that competition for rankings encourages stratification within university systems, which in turn exacerbates social inequality. “Excellence initiatives” funnel money to top universities, whose students, even if admission is highly competitive, tend to be the children of the well-off. “Those at the top get more government resources and those at the bottom get least,” points out Ms Hazelkorn. That’s true even in Britain, which, despite not having an excellence initiative, favours top universities through the allocation of research money. According to a study of over 120 universities by Alison Wolf of King’s College London and Andrew Jenkins of University College London, the Russell Group, a self-selected elite of 24 universities, get nearly half of the funding for the entire sector, and increased their share from 44.7% in 2001-02 to 49.1% in 2013-14.

The rankings race draws other complaints. Some universities have hired “rankings managers”, which critics argue is not a good use of resources. Saudi Arabian universities have been accused of giving highly cited academics lucrative part-time contracts and requiring them to use their Saudi affiliation when publishing.

Intellectual citizens of nowhere

Notwithstanding its downsides, the rankings race has encouraged a benign trend with far-reaching implications: internationalisation. The top level of academia, particularly in the sciences, is perhaps the world’s most international community, as Professor Marginson’s work shows. Whereas around 4% of first-degree students in the OECD study abroad, a quarter of PhD students do. Research is getting more global: 22% of science and engineering papers were internationally co-authored in 2016, up from 16% in 2003. The rankings, which give marks for international co-authorship, encourage this trend. That is one reason why Japan, whose universities are as insular as its culture, lags. As research grows—in 2000-14 the annual number of PhDs awarded rose by half in America, doubled in Britain and quintupled in China—so does the size and importance of this multinational network.

Researchers work together across borders on borderless problems—from climate change to artificial intelligence. They gather at conferences, spend time in each other’s universities and spread knowledge and scholarship across the world. Forced to publish in English, they share at least one language. They befriend each other, marry each other and support each other, politically as well as intellectually. Last year, for instance, when Cambridge University Press blocked online access to hundreds of articles on sensitive subjects, including the Tiananmen Square massacre, at the request of the Chinese government, it faced international protests, and an American academic launched a petition which was signed by over 1,500 academics around the world. CUP backed down.

The rankings race is thus marked by a happy irony. Driven in part by nationalistic urges, it has fostered the growth of a community that knows no borders. Critics are right that governments and universities obsess too much about rankings. Yet the world benefits from the growth of this productive, international body of scholars.

https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/1280-width/images/2018/05/articles/body_5#.jpg

#Chine #classement_de_Shanghai #compétition #classement #ranking #QS #Times_Higher_Education #THE #excellence #Exzellenzinitiative #Allemagne #Inde #France #Singapour #Taïwan #Corée_du_Sud #Nigeria #Russie #USA #Etats-Unis #Angleterre #UK #recherche #publications #publications_scientifiques #enseignement #réputation #sciences_sociales #sciences_dures #précarité #précarisation #travail #inégalités #anglais #langue #internationalisation #globalisation #mondialisation

La fin est très en phase avec le journal qui a publié cet article, hélas :

Critics are right that governments and universities obsess too much about rankings. Yet the world benefits from the growth of this productive, international body of scholars.

❞

La première version de cet article a été apparemment corrigée :

Correction (May 22nd, 2018): An earlier version of this piece suggested that non-English data and books are not included in the rankings. This is incorrect. The article has been amended to remove that assertion.

–-> mais en fait, en réalité, il n’aurait pas dû l’être. Pour avoir expérimenté moi-même une fois le #H-index sur ma liste de publications, je peux vous dire qu’aucun article en d’autres langues que l’anglais avait été retenu dans l’index. Et même pas tous les articles en anglais que j’ai publiés...

▻http://www.essentialaction.org/shell/issues.html et bien d’autres. Cela fait au moins 40 ans que la situation scandaleuse dans le delta du Niger est connue. #petrole #polution #massacre_environnemental

#merci

Il serait intéressant de savoir qui finance ladite force

@kassem: quelques réponses à ta question ici:

The European Union’s partnership with the G5 Sahel countries

On 23 February 2018, the European Commission is hosting the International High Level Conference on the Sahel in Brussels, with the African Union, the United Nations and the G5 Sahel group of countries, to strengthen international support for the G5 Sahel regions.

Why is the EU working with Africa’s “G5 Sahel countries”?

In 2014, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger set up the “G5 Sahel” group of countries to foster close cooperation in the region and tackle the major challenges that these countries face. Since then, the EU has stepped up cooperation with this African-led initiative to build a strong partnership on many fronts: from political dialogue, to development and humanitarian support, to strengthening security and tackling irregular migration.

The Sahel region faces a number of pressing challenges such as extreme poverty, frequent food and nutrition crises, conflict, irregular migration and related crimes such as human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Violent extremism also poses a serious security challenge to the region and has potential spill-over effects outside the region, including Europe.

What are the EU’s main areas of support to the G5 Sahel countries?

The EU is now supporting the G5 Sahel countries on 3 main tracks:

Political partnership: The EU is a strong political partner of the G5 Sahel countries and has set up regular “EU-G5” dialogues. High Representative Vice-President Federica Mogherini has held annual meetings with G5 Sahel Foreign Ministers to strengthen cooperation in areas of shared interest such as security, migration, counter-terrorism, youth employment, humanitarian response and long-term development. The EU is also strongly engaged in the Mali peace process.
Development assistance: The EU, together with its Member States, is the biggest provider of development assistance to the region with €8 billion over 2014-2020. It uses all its tools to support development efforts in the region, notably the ’EU Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa’ under which €843 million has been committed so far. The EU is also a member and key supporter of the newly formed Alliance for the Sahel, set up to coordinate existing EU and Member States development assistance better in the region, in a faster and more interlinked way than before through joint action.
Security support: The EU supports concrete regional-led security initiatives. The EU has already provided an initial €50 million to establish the African led G5 Sahel Joint Force which aims to improve regional security and fight terrorist groups. The EU is itself a key security player in the region, with its 3 active Common Security and Defence Policy missions; EUCAP Sahel Niger, EUCAP Sahel Mali, EU training mission (EUTM) in Mali.

How is the EU involved in the Alliance for the Sahel?

The EU is a member of the Alliance for the Sahel, launched and signed by the EU, France and Germany in July 2017. It is currently composed of 9 members: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, the EU, UNDP, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the World Bank. It aims to coordinate and deliver aid quicker and more efficiently in the region. It will have a particular focus on peripheral, cross border and fragile zones of the Sahel. Since its launch, the Sahel Alliance has identified priority six priority areas: (1) youth employment; (2) rural development, agriculture and food security; (3) climate, notably energy access, green energy and water; (4) governance; (5) support for return of basic services throughout the territory, including through decentralisation; (6) security.

What security support does the EU provide in the Sahel?

The G5 Sahel Joint Force

The EU has fully supported this African led initiative from the very beginning and provided an initial contribution of €50 million to help set it up. This EU funding is provided through the African Peace Facility and can only cover non-lethal equipment.

Building on the EU’s defence planning capacity and expertise, the EU has set up a one of a kind Coordination Hub to gather together the many offers of international support to the G5 Joint Force. The Hub is already up and running and enables donors to channel much needed assistance. In practice it works by matching the offers of donors to a Recognised List of Needs provided and determined by the Joint Force.

The Joint Force will be comprised of troops from Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, and will operate in all five countries. To step up action on security, particularly in border areas in the Sahel countries which face terrorist and security threats, the G5 Sahel countries have set up their own regional security force. Concretely, the G5 Joint Force will have permanent forces deployed along the borders, able to operate together under a centralised command and communication structure. This will help tackle the pressing terrorist and security threat in the region, which is a cross-border issue for all the countries concerned.

Missions under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)

The EU currently has three CSDP missions in the Sahel:

EUCAP Sahel Niger is a civilian mission supporting the Nigerien security institutions/forces (Police, Gendarmerie, National Guard, Armed forces) to reinforce the rule of law and Nigerien capacities to fight terrorism and organised crime. Since May 2015, its mandate has been enlarged to a fifth objective related to migration. Niger has opened a field office in Agadez, with a permanent presence activated from May 2015.
EUCAP Sahel Mali is a civilian mission providing expertise in strategic advice and training to the Malian Police, Gendarmerie and National Guard and the relevant ministries in order to support reform in the security sector. A renewed mandate extends the mission until January 2019 and includes a reference to ‘the Accord for Peace & Reconciliation’ and instructions to contribute to the inter-operability and coordination of the internal security forces of the G5 Sahel countries and the Malian internal security forces.
EUTM Mali is a military training mission providing advice to the Malian authorities in the restructuring of the Malian Armed Forces, through the training of battalions (8 between 2013 and 2017) and support for the elaboration of the first Defence Programming Law ever adopted in Mali. Since July 2017, two security experts – one military and one civil – have been deployed in each of the five Sahel countries as part of the regionalisation of the CSPD missions. Their mandate currently runs until May 2018.

How does the EU support the peace process in Mali?

The EU is actively supporting Mali’s peace process and is a guarantor of the Peace and Reconciliation Agreement signed in 2015. The EU supports the United Nations Resolution for targeted sanctions against those who threaten the Mali peace agreement, and is a major partner of Mali on security. Two EU CSDP missions, one military (EUTM) and one civilian (EUCAP Sahel Mali) provide strategic advice and training to Mali’s Armed and Security Forces and relevant ministries in order to contribute to the restauration of Malian territorial integrity, the protection of the population, and to support reforms in the security sector. High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini visited Mali in June 2017 and announced EU support of €500,000 to the ’Comité de suivi de l’accord pour la paix et la réconciliation au Mali’.

How does the EU support the region with humanitarian assistance?

The European Union is one of the largest providers of humanitarian aid to the Sahel countries (including Nigeria and Senegal). In 2017, the European Commission allocated €234 million, including €90.2 million for food assistance, €56.7 million for nutrition, €22.5 million for health and €11 million for protection. Furthermore, the EU also supports disaster risk reduction initiatives to enhance emergency preparedness and response. Thanks to EU support, over 1.9 million vulnerable people received food assistance in 2017. The EU also supported the treatment of 455,000 children for malnutrition and in need of assistance.

EU assistance per G5 Sahel country:

Burkina Faso

European Development Fund: €628 million (2014-2020): support for good governance, health, food security, agriculture, water, employment, culture, sustainable energy, public services, including budget support
EU Trust Fund for Africa: €154,5 million (since 2016) plus regional projects
Humanitarian aid: €6.5 million (2017)

Chad

European Development Fund: €542 million (2014-2020): support for (i) food security, nutrition and rural development; (ii) management of natural resources; (iii) strengthening the rule of law
Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: €113.3 million (since 2016) plus regional projects
Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace: €6.9 million
Humanitarian aid: €53 million (2017)

Mali

European Development Fund: €665 million (2014-2020): support for (i) peace consolidation and State reform, (ii) Rural Development and food security, (iii) education and infrastructure
African Investment Facility: €100 million for the construction of road and energy infrastructures
Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: €186.5 million (since 2016) plus regional projects
Humanitarian aid: €34 million (2017)
EU CSDP missions: EUCAP Sahel Mali, EUTM Mali

Mauritania

European Development Fund: €160 million (2014-2020): support for (i) rural development, (ii) good governance and (iii) the improvement of the health system.
African Investment Facility: €20.5 million for the construction of infrastructure.
Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: €54.2 million (since 2016) plus regional projects.
Humanitarian aid: €11.8 million (2017)

#Niger

European Development Fund: €686 million (2014-2020): support for (i) food security and resilience (ii) supporting the State in delivering social services (iii) security, governance, and peace consolidation (iv) road infrastructure for regions at risk of insecurity and conflict.
Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: €229.9 million (since 2016)
Humanitarian aid: €42.6 million (2017)
African Investment Facility: 36 million (2017)
Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace
CSDP mission: EUCAP Sahel Niger

▻http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-18-942_en.htm
#Mauritanie #Mali #Tchad #Burkina_Faso #business #argent

Vu du Burkina Faso. L’armée française encore endeuillée, le G5 Sahel a besoin d’aide

Deux soldats français ont été tués au Mali, mercredi 21 février. Selon ce site d’information burkinabé, c’est le signe que le sommet sur le G5 Sahel, qui se tient à Bruxelles vendredi, doit proposer des avancées concrètes pour lutter contre le terrorisme dans la région.

▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/vu-du-burkina-faso-larmee-francaise-encore-endeuillee-le-g5-s

Donors pledge $500 million for troops in West Africa’s Sahel

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - International donors pledged half a billion dollars for a multinational military operation in West Africa’s Sahel region on Friday, as Europe seeks to stop migrants and militants reaching its shores.

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/966975633560604673/g5D2YkbZ?format=jpg&name=600x314#.jpg

New funding for Sahel confirms link between development efforts, security and migration control

In the context of the High Level Conference on the Sahel, an international commitment of 414 million Euro’s was announced by the European Commission on February 23. The ambition of tackling root causes of instability and irregular migration resembles the focus areas of the EU Partnership with Sahel.

The announcement of funding confirms the willingness of EU and Member States to commit substantial economic and political investment in the Sahel region (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger) including 8 billion Euro in development assistance (2014-2020), and 100 million Euro additional contribution to the Joint Force of the G5 Sahel.

The EU is already active in the region with three Common Security and Defence Policy missions in the region (EUCAP Sahel Niger, EUCAP Sahel, Mali, EUTM Mali) and 843 million Euro committed through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa

From the EU-G5 Sahel strengthened partnership, created in 2014 to the Sahel Regional Action Plan (RAP), adopted in 2015, and to the German French led Alliance for the Sahel in 2017, migration management and security are constant and interlinked areas of focus.

“It is positive that Europe is increasing funding for the Sahel region where the needs are evident and urgent. However, it is vital that the focus is on the long-term development, with the SDG as the yardstick, and on the security of the people in the region. Focusing spending on prevention of migration to Europe doesn’t tackle root causes – and may even exacerbate them by disrupting local economic migration. There are multiple development, human security, and sector reform activities, run by local populations and authorities across the Sahel, in which the EU could invest,” says ECRE Secretary General Catherine Woollard.

The increased focus on security and migration control was criticized by Francesco Rocca, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) after a recent visit to Niger meeting stranded migrants unable to reach Europe and unable to return home: “When we talk about European migration policies, it is only about security – how they are not allowed to enter – and not about the dignified manner in which you have to treat human beings,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

France is heavily engaged in Sahel and has 4000 troops in the region, is conducting asylum procedures in Niger as the first European country to do so on the African continent and a French draft law on immigration and asylum put forward by the Macron government on February 21 defines Niger as a safe third country.

The European Commission (February 27) as well as the Council of the European Union (February 26) have announced additional substantial funding packages with a focus on migrant management.

▻https://www.ecre.org/new-funding-for-sahel-confirm-link-between-development-efforts-security-and-mi
#développement #migrations #sécurité

Rencontre à Niamey sur la migration - Déclaration conjointe suivant la réunion de coordination de la lutte contre le trafic illicite de migrants et la traite des êtres humains

Les Ministres de l’Intérieur et des Affaires étrangères d’#Allemagne, du #Burkina_Faso, de la #Côte_d’Ivoire, de l’#Espagne, de la #Guinée, de la #France, de l’#Italie, de la #Libye, du #Mali, de la #Mauritanie, du #Niger, du #Sénégal, du #Tchad, ainsi que l’Union européenne, l’Organisation des Nations unies, la Commission de l’Union africaine, les Secrétariats du G5 Sahel et de la #CENSAD, se sont réunis à Niamey le 16 mars 2018, à l’invitation du Niger assurant la Présidence du G5 Sahel, pour améliorer la coordination de la lutte contre le trafic illicite de migrants et la traite des êtres humains entre les Etats d’origine, de transit et d’arrivée de migrants. Ont participé à cette réunion l’Organisation Internationale des Migrations et le Haut- Commissariat aux Réfugiés des Nations Unies et l’Office des Nations unies contre la drogue et le crime.

2. Rappelant que le Niger, le Tchad, la Libye, l’Union européenne, la France, l’Allemagne, l’Italie et l’Espagne ont affirmé, dans une déclaration conjointe adoptée à Paris le 28 août 2017, leur volonté de lutter contre les réseaux de passeurs afin de limiter les migrations irrégulières vers l’Europe et de protéger les migrants contre les atteintes aux droits de l’Homme et les conditions dégradantes qu’ils subissent. Ils sont également convenus à cette fin de renforcer leur soutien opérationnel aux efforts des pays de transit des migrations.

3. Soulignant que ces objectifs ont été réaffirmés lors du Sommet Union européenne-Union africaine d’Abidjan le 29 novembre 2017 qui a permis l’adoption d’un plan en neuf points pour renforcer la coopération entre les services de police et de renseignement pour lutter contre les réseaux de trafiquants et des passeurs et mettre ainsi un terme à leurs activités, y compris les circuits financiers et leurs avoirs, et aux crimes subis par les migrants.

4. Reconnaissant les efforts en vue de la réinstallation des réfugiés identifiés et évacués de la Libye, en coopération étroite avec le Haut-Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés et ce conformément aux priorités de l’UE, de l’Allemagne, de l’Espagne, de la France et de l’Italie qui avaient convenu de mener des missions de protection au Niger et au Tchad, en étroite concertation et en accord avec leurs gouvernements.

5. Se basant sur les engagements pris dans le cadre du Plan d’action conjoint de la Valette, des Processus de Rabat et de Khartoum, de la Déclaration de Malte et se félicitant des résultats atteints dans ces cadres ;

6. Soulignant la nécessité d’une approche globale et solidaire pour la gestion intégrée de la migration et ce, à travers notamment le partage équitable des responsabilités entre les pays d’origine, de transit et de destination, et selon leurs capacités nationales, en l’occurrence par le financement de projets d’investissement, en particulier dans les zones d’origine et de transit des migrants ;

7. Rappelant la volonté de poursuivre une approche coordonnée au développement durable dans le but de s’attaquer aux causes profondes de la migration irrégulière et des déplacements forcés dans les pays d’origine ;

8. Relevant les efforts consentis par les différents pays se trouvant sur la route de la Méditerranée centrale, en particulier par les communautés locales dans les pays de transit, pour lutter contre les passeurs, prévenir la migration irrégulière, assister et rapatrier les migrants bloqués et coopérer à l’identification et à la protection des demandeurs d’asile et réfugiés ;

9. Mettant en exergue la nécessité de développer les conditions d’émergence d’une économie alternative à l’économie souterraine du trafic illicite des migrants et de la traite des êtres humains par la création de nouvelles sources de revenus au profit des communautés affectées par le trafic ou en passe de l’être dans les pays de transit.

10. Saluant les efforts déjà fournis dans la gestion et la gouvernance de la migration par les pays africains, l’UE et ses Etats membres à travers la mise en œuvre du Plan de la Valette et les dialogues politiques migratoires nationaux et régionaux.

11. Rappelant le soutien continu offert par l’UE et ses Etats membres qui ont déjà permis, entre autres, en partenariat avec l’Organisation Internationale pour les Migrations et le Haut-Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les Réfugiés, le retour volontaire et la réintégration de 15 000 migrants et l’évacuation de plus de 1000 réfugiés de Libye en accord avec les engagements pris lors du Sommet Union Africaine – Union Européenne d’Abidjan.

12. Les participants ont convenu d’engager ensemble les actions suivantes :

1) Renforcer les cadres législatifs nationaux en matière de lutte contre le trafic illicite et la traite d’êtres humains

13. Continuer de soutenir l’élaboration de stratégies migratoires nationales cohérentes visant à garantir les droits des migrants et permettant de judiciariser l’ensemble des formes de criminalité associées au trafic illicite de migrants et à la traite des êtres humains, de lutter contre le blanchiment d’argent et de saisir les avoirs criminels.

14. Promouvoir notamment la Convention des Nations Unies contre la criminalité transnationale organisée et en particulier la ratification de ses deux protocoles, l’un visant à prévenir, réprimer et punir la traite des personnes, en particulier des femmes et des enfants, l’autre à lutter contre le trafic illicite de migrants par terre, air et mer.

15. Faciliter davantage le partage d’expériences, la conduite de missions techniques d’assistance menées par les Etats déjà parties à ces protocoles et l’établissement d’un mécanisme de suivi de l’élaboration des cadres législatifs nationaux visant à cette ratification.

16. Encourager la ratification par les Etats membres de la CEDEAO impliqués dans la lutte contre le trafic de migrants de tous les protocoles et conventions de cette organisation contre la traite des Personnes et le Trafic illicite de Migrants, afin de disposer d’un arsenal juridique uniforme pour développer la coopération policière entre ces Etats.

2) Renforcer les outils nationaux de lutte opérationnelle contre le trafic illicite de migrants et la traite des êtres humains et mieux coordonner ces outils nationaux au niveau régional

17. Soutenir, dans les pays africains d’origine et de transit des migrants la création d’équipes conjointes d’investigation (ECI), coordonnées étroitement avec les forces de police et de gendarmerie nationales, les forces armées et les gardes nationales, ainsi que la Force Conjointe du G5 Sahel, ayant pour mission d’identifier et d’interpeler les membres de réseaux d’immigration irrégulière et de traite des êtres humains, et assurer un financement pérenne du fonctionnement de ces structures.

18. Soutenir, dans les mêmes pays, la création de groupes d’action rapide – surveillance et intervention (GAR-SI), destinés à stabiliser les zones isolées et les régions transfrontalières pour faire cesser les trafics de migrants et lutter contre la traite des êtres humains. Assurer la durabilité et la bonne intégration de ces dispositifs par les autorités nationales dans le maillage national des forces de défense et de sécurité, ainsi que la coordination régionale de ces dispositifs nationaux, afin de pouvoir lutter efficacement contre les réseaux transnationaux.

19. Appuyer l’évolution des mandats des missions EUCAP SAHEL Niger et EUCAP Mali, ainsi que EUBAM Libye, dans le cadre d’une approche coordonnée aux actions de l’Union Européenne de sécurité et de défense commune dans la région, en vue de renforcer le soutien aux forces de sécurité intérieure contre les réseaux de passeurs.

20. Sur la base d’AFIC (Africa-Frontex Intelligence Community), renforcer la coopération avec l’Agence Européenne de Garde-Frontières et de Garde-Côtes (Frontex) et établir des partenariats opérationnels entre les pays d’origine et de transit des flux migratoires et l’Agence Européenne de Garde-Frontières et de Garde-Côtes, notamment en développant davantage l’échange d’informations et le travail analytique conjoint concernant la gestion des frontières, y compris la lutte contre le trafic illicite de migrants, la traite des êtres humains et d’autres activités illicites affectant la sécurité des frontières..

21. Assurer une coordination régionale entre équipes nationales d’investigation pour assurer le démantèlement effectif des réseaux transnationaux. En particulier, établir une matrice recensant des points de contacts nationaux en charge de la lutte contre les réseaux de trafic de migrants et de traite des êtres humains, pour assurer des échanges réguliers entre services de sécurité intérieure.

22. Assurer la bonne appropriation et le fonctionnement des systèmes d’échanges et de partage d’information- qui pourront être favorisés par la mise en place dans chaque pays d’un système électronique centralisée d’information policière pour assurer la coordination de la lutte contre la criminalité organisée, y compris en matière de trafic de migrants et de traite des êtres humains, qui sont actuellement développés en Afrique de l’Ouest, tels que la plateforme de coopération en matière de sécurité (PCMS) du G5 Sahel et le Système d’Information Policière pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest (SIPAO/WAPIS).

3) Renforcer les capacités technique et matérielle des Forces de défense et de sécurité en charge de la lutte contre le trafic illicite et la traite de personnes dans les pays d’origine et de transit.

23. Développer et intensifier des formations des membres des Forces de Défense et Sécurité chargées de la lutte contre le trafic de migrants dans tous les pays pour qu’elles développent un savoir spécifique dans le domaine. Les activités de formation menées par EUCAP Sahel Niger et Mali peuvent servir de référence pour l’élaboration et la conduite de ces programmes de formation (détection de faux documents, enquêtes sur réseaux, etc.).

24. Soutenir la mise en place des infrastructures et l’équipement des Forces de Défense et de Sécurité dans le cadre du contrôle des frontières dans des zones névralgiques sur la route de migration irrégulière de la Méditerranée centrale (Nord Niger et Nord Tchad).

4) Renforcer la coopération judiciaire

25. Soutenir la mise en place et le renforcement de dispositifs de coopération judiciaire à l’échelle de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. En particulier, assurer la consolidation du réseau d’Autorités Centrales et de Procureurs d’Afrique de l’Ouest (WACAP), établi au sein de la CEDEAO et qui associe la Mauritanie, notamment en appuyant financièrement le développement du dispositif.

26. Travailler à la coordination des réseaux judiciaires avec les mécanismes d’entraide judiciaire qui existent dans les pays de destination des migrants et des victimes de la traite afin de disposer d’un cadre cohérent associant pays d’origine, de transit et de destination des migrations irrégulières. Promouvoir des mécanismes d’entraide judiciaire et d’extradition entre les Etats où de tels mécanismes n’existent pas.

5) Renforcer le contrôle des frontières

27. Renforcer les dispositifs nationaux de contrôle des frontières, associant à la fois les forces de défense et les forces de sécurité intérieure, pour identifier les voies empruntées par les flux migratoires irréguliers et permettre l’interception des moyens de transport utilisés par les réseaux de trafic illicite de migrants et de traite des êtres humains.

28. Renforcer les dispositifs régionaux de surveillance des frontières dont l’action doit contribuer à la lutte contre l’activité des réseaux de trafic de migrants et de traite des êtres humains. A cet égard, appuyer la pleine mise en œuvre du mandat de lutte contre les trafiquants de migrants et la traite des êtres humains au sein du G5 Sahel, en particulier par le développement au sein des PC de fuseau d’une composante police et justice afin d’assurer la continuité de la chaîne pénale et un traitement judiciaire approprié des personnes interpelées.

6) Protéger les migrants irréguliers et les victimes de la traite

29. Appuyer le travail conjoint de la Task Force tripartite UA-UE-ONU mise en place au Sommet d’Abidjan afin de faciliter la protection internationale des demandeurs d’asile actuellement en Libye et au Niger, en vue de leur prise en charge dans les meilleures conditions humaines et matérielles par le HCR et l’OIM et dans ce cadre, soutenir les programmes de retour volontaire assisté des migrants

30. Respecter les termes des engagements pris dans la déclaration conjointe adoptée à Paris le 28 août 2017 et réaffirmés lors du Sommet Union européenne-Union africaine d’Abidjan le 29 novembre 2017 concernant la réinstallation par les pays européens des réfugiés et des demandeurs d’asile évacués hors de Libye.

31. Mettre en place des mécanismes de référencement, d’orientation et de prise en charge des victimes de la traite des êtres humains afin d’éviter qu’elles soient à nouveau la cible de réseaux criminels de traite. Mettre en place des dispositifs d’accompagnement des migrants interpellés avec les passeurs afin d’éviter de nouvelles sollicitations ou tentatives de migration irrégulière.

32. Continuer de soutenir les migrants vulnérables sur le chemin du retour pour faciliter leur intégration économique dans leurs communautés locales ;

7) Assurer le développement durable et la promotion d’une économie alternative pour la maitrise des flux migratoires.

33. Continuer la mise en œuvre effective du plan de la Valette par la prise en compte des programmes de développement durable pour s’attaquer aux causes profondes de la migration irrégulière et des programmes pour la maitrise des flux migratoires et le développement d’une économie alternative.

34. Promouvoir des alternatives économiques au trafic dans la région et développer la résilience des populations locales à travers l’amélioration de l’accès aux services de base et la création d’opportunités d’emploi, notamment pour les jeunes.

35. Renforcer les mécanismes de suivi et d’évaluation des projets FFU et des autres partenaires entrant dans le cadre de la lutte contre le trafic illicite de migrants et la traite de personnes ;

8) Assurer le suivi des engagements

36. Instituer un mécanisme permanent de suivi des engagements pris pendant la présente réunion.

37. Organiser le 18 juin 2018, à Niamey, un atelier de concertation régionale sur la lutte contre le trafic de migrants et la traite des êtres humains, qui réunira les directeurs généraux des services de défense et de sécurité intérieure, les directeurs généraux chargés de la migration, les points focaux nationaux en charge de la lutte contre les réseaux de trafic et de traite des Etats participants, pour accompagner la mise en œuvre pratique des engagements contenus dans cette déclaration.

38. Informer les pays partenaires des progrès effectués dans la mise en œuvre des engagements contenus dans cette déclaration par le biais des points de contact des participants.

STATEMENT/18/2067, Bruxelles, 16 Mars 2018

▻https://www.google.com/search?q=Rencontre+%C3%A0+Niamey+sur+la+migration+%E2%80%93+D%C3%A9claration

From Nigeria to #Catania, the path of victims of sex trafficking

Where they come from, how they travel, how they are treated, how afraid they are, and the degree to which they are willing to disclose the specific links of the trafficking chain. From the latest IOM report to the public prosecutor who is trying to investigate this matter more and more, Claudia Torrisi retraces the route of sex trafficking victims, which often crosses through Catania.

►http://openmigration.org/en/analyses/from-nigeria-to-catania-the-path-of-victims-of-sex-trafficking/?platform=hootsuite

#Sahel #barrages #barrages_hydroélectriques #Hadejia-Nguru #migrations #réfugiés_environnementaux #sécheresse #migrations #asile #réfugiés

Six Nigerian asylum seekers die as Cameroon forcefully repatriates them

▻https://odili.net/news/source/2018/aug/3/802.html
#décès #mourir_au_cameroun #mort

Cameroon Forces Nigerian Refugees back to Violence

https://www.ecre.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/EU-Civil-Protection-and-humanitarian-aid-Dec-2014-1.jpg

Since November, more than 80,000 Nigerians have been forcibly displaced in the north- east of the country, due to an upsurge in the on- going violent clashes between non-state armed groups and the Nigerian military. The situation for those who were forced to flee into Cameroon is alarming; Cameroonian authorities have denied refuge and forcibly returned civilians back across the border.

An attack on the Nigerian town of Rann on January 14 which was reportedly executed by Boko Haram, forced more than 9000 people to flee into Cameroon. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that buildings had been destroyed, looted and burned to the ground; “it was like a graveyard”.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is extremely alarmed by reports of the forced return of several thousand Nigerian refugees by Cameroonian authorities this week, following the return of 267 on January 16. The Norwegian Refugee Council have called this development “a breach of international and regional agreements” including the Tripartite Agreement signed on March 2017, which guarantees the protection and human rights of forcibly displaced persons.

“This action was totally unexpected and puts lives of thousands of refugees at risk,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. “I am appealing to Cameroon to continue its open door and hospitable policy and practices and halt immediately any more returns and to ensure full compliance with its refugee protection obligations”.

UNHCR also sounded the alarm on Tuesday regarding the flight of 6000 Nigerians into Chad after an attack on the town of Baga, many of them having to paddle for three hours to reach the lakeside village of Ngouboua. Chadian authorities are carrying out registration and pre-screening of new arrivals, of which 55 per cent are children, to evaluate their needs.

Nigeria has been dominated by violent civil conflict between opposition groups since 2009, which in addition to the 1.8 million people that have become internally displaced within Nigeria, has lead an estimated 200,000 to flee to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Andrew Mews, MSF’s country director in Nigeria, said the attacks gave the lie to suggestions of improved stability in the country’s north-east; “The emergency is not over yet”.

▻https://www.ecre.org/cameroon-forces-nigerian-refugees-back-to-violence

Bon retour de vacances @sinehebdo
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#Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie

Voir aussi :

Il ne faut pas que ça se voie
Prototypekblog, 26 septembre 2017
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/632825

#maladie

L’asymptote du dépressif
Prototypekblog, le 25 février 2021
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/903963

#domaine_public #copyright
Sur la photo, il y a aussi #Le_Corbusier

This year in June, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria and representatives of the Owan and Okomu communities delivered a letter to Godwin Obaseki administration, urging them to uphold a revocation Order on 13,750 hectares of land expropriated by Okomu Plc in the rich Owan and Okomu forest reserves. The latter meant the revival of a long-standing reaction to persistence of corporate impunity and of institutional inaction against the mounting violation of indigenous peoples’ land rights.

The action followed a protest march called “People’s March Against Land-grabbing and Deforestation in Edo State”, which was to expose Okomu Plc’s defiance of the revocation order.

Under former Governor Adams Oshiomhole, the sale of the lands in contention covering an estimated 13,750 hectares spread through Okomu and Owan forest reserve were reversed. However, Okomu Plc has been deliberately disregarding the government order for two years.

“In the process, over 60,000 rural farmers in the farming communities have been displaced” the ERA/FoEN disclosed in a statement on June 21 (extracted from the field report by Rita Uwaka, Project Officer and Coordinator for Forest & Biodiversity.