The routes change and look for other outlets, often longer, more expensive and dangerous than the previous ones. And so the policies of rejection of the North of the world achieve their objectives.
The number of arrivals in Italy has fallen (28,376 as of 11 July, compared to 73,173 a year ago: less than half) and the government is claiming victory. The strategy of externalizing borders now seems to be bearing fruit, through agreements with the Tunisian authoritarian government and the renewal of funding for the Libyan government and local militias. Of course, caution is needed: departures and landings have fluctuated for years, depending on various factors, including the weather and sea conditions, which have long been unfavorable this year. The routes change and look for other outlets, often longer, more expensive and dangerous than the previous ones. But I think we have to admit that the policies implemented by the governments of the North of the world for the containment of unwanted migration and spontaneous arrivals for asylum in the end achieve most of their objectives. We have already seen this with the agreements between the EU and Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Morocco, Niger (now denounced by the coup government).
For the governments of the transit countries and for the ruling elites, the advantages of collaboration are tangible, in terms of funding, political support at the IMF or in other international forums, tolerance for their methods of governance, promises of future entry into the EU or preferential treatment. The costs for governments are low, especially when it comes to repressing the passage of citizens of other countries, who are too weak and lacking support to threaten internal social consensus. What we do not see and do not want to see are the human costs of the repression of cross-border mobility in Africa. A recent UNHCR report shed at least partial light on the deaths in the Sahara desert. The documented figure is 1,180 people who died crossing the desert between January 2020 and May 2024, but witnesses and researchers are convinced that the figure is much higher. Violence, kidnappings, torture, abandonment in dangerous situations, arbitrary detention, pushbacks, dot the routes that try to reach the Mediterranean from the East and West of sub-Saharan Africa. The UNHCR speaks of “unimaginable horrors”.
The point is that EU-funded governments aggravate this dramatic situation: a “Lighthouse Report” carried out by a pool of major European and North American newspapers (Desert Dumps) with a year-long investigation, documented that in three African countries (Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia) African refugees and workers are captured solely on the basis of skin color, loaded onto buses and unloaded “in the middle of nowhere”, often in desert areas. Here they are abandoned without assistance, water or food, exposed to the risk of imprisonment, extortion, torture, sexual violence. Others, taken to border areas, are said to be sold by the authorities to gangs who imprison and torture them for ransom. All this is happening, according to the report, thanks to money, vehicles, equipment, information and security forces provided by the EU and European governments.
In the Tunisian case, thirteen incidents occurred between July 2023 and May 2024, in which groups of Africans were rounded up in cities or ports and taken many kilometers away, usually near the borders with Libya or Algeria, and dumped there. In another case, a group was handed over to Libyan authorities and detained in a detention centre.
As if that were not enough, in the Moroccan case, a group of Spanish police officers was filmed regularly entering a migrant detention center. The report states that the EU “is well aware of the unloading operations and sometimes directly involved”.
This is what is behind the decrease in landings: a cynical delegation to other governments to take on the dirty work of containing transits and a dramatic cost in terms of suffering and lost human lives.
Migrants welcomed by the Red Cross in Lampedusa – Vincenzo Livieri