Friday, October 13, 2017

Migrants dying in the Sahara

West African migrants trying to reach Europe are dying in far greater numbers in the Sahara than in the Mediterranean. So far this year 2,569 migrant deaths have been recorded in the central Mediterranean.

"One thing we still don't have is any estimate of number of deaths in the desert," Richard Danziger, the U.N. International Organization for Migration director for West and Central Africa, told a news conference in Geneva. "We assume, and I think we have said before, that it has to be at least double those who die in the Mediterranean."

In Niger, a main transit route, people smugglers were increasingly scared of the authorities, which might make them more prone to abandon migrants in the desert, he said. "Right now they are looking for alternative routes, I think at least equally dangerous," he said. "When you plug one hole, other holes are going to open up," Danziger said.

Niger had two routes to Libya: one closer to Chad that was used to smuggle migrants and one closer to the Algerian border that was far more dangerous and was used by extremist groups and for drugs and gun-running. An alternative was through northern Mali, a region beset by conflicts between rival groups. The route considered the safest was along the western coast of Africa, via Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco to the Strait of Gibraltar, and migrant flows there had increased.

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