The workshop addresses the complex issues surrounding illegal emigration by sea from West Africa, highlighting the interplay of conflict, economic challenges, and climate change as driving factors. It emphasizes the need for a well-managed migration framework that supports legal migration and addresses the humanitarian crises faced by migrants, including their debts upon return. The discussion also outlines the significant role of community support in navigating the challenges of migration and reintegration.

1. Training/Awareness Creation Workshop on Challenges and Solutions to Illegal
Emigration By Sea From West Africa: Case Studies From The Gambia
Dawda Foday Saine
24th October, 2023
BAOBAB HOLIDAY & RESORT

2. Introduction
 African migration is being driven by a varied combination of push-pull factors for each
country. The primary push factors are conflict, repressive governance, and limited
economic opportunities. Nine of the top 15 African countries of origin for migrants are
in conflict.
 Surveys of African migrants in or heading toward Europe reveal that the majority were
either employed or in school at the time of their departure. Yet, they felt despair over
their economic prospects.
 Migrants tend to have resources at hand—either in the form of jobs or from familial
networks of support—especially when family members are already in another country.
 Without a doubt, migration is a defining issue of this century. One billion people, one-
seventh of the world’s population, are migrants. Some 258 million people are
international migrants, 40 million are internally displaced and 24 million are refugees
or asylum seekers. In 2018, there is no longer a single state that can claim to be
untouched by human mobility.
 About 423 million people are living in the Economic Community of West African States,
a 15-member grouping whose aim is to promote economic integration in a region
where the unemployment rate is sometimes 20%—inevitably leading to migration.
 The protection of migrants is a core value of the International Organization for
Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency. Globally, but especially in the Sahel region,
abuses against migrants have grown more frequent along the migration routes. Human
trafficking and smuggling exacerbate the vulnerability of migrants, especially those
without access to documentation.

3. What is legal Migration?
 Any person not a citizen of country who is residing in that country under
legally recognized and lawfully recorded permanent residence as an
immigrant. Also known as “Permanent Resident Alien,” “Resident Alien Permit
Holder,”
What are the most types of migrants?
 Labor Migration
 Forced Migration or Displacement
 Human Trafficking
 Environmental Migration

4. What is Illegal Migration?
 Every nation, country, or colony often has rules and laws that control and regulate
people who come in from other places.
 Migration becomes illegal if people do not have the permission of the country or
borders they are entering.
 People sneak into other countries by land or sea, and other organized groups help
people to sneak into other countries to work illegally. This illegal activity is known
as human trafficking.

5. Challenges in Managing Migration
 Insufficient migration data
 weak border management and controls
 the recurrent need for humanitarian assistance
 irregular migration and human trafficking
 Without effective bilateral or regional mobility agreements, thousands of workers
will migrate
 Climate Disasters Will Continue to Increase Vulnerability Potentially Causing More
Migration
- The World Bank projects there will be 86 million climate change migrants in Africa by
2050. Some of the 18 million seasonal migrant workers in Africa may find their jobs in
agriculture, mining, and fishing disappearing, increasing the prospects for permanent
migration in search of new job opportunities.

6. Reasons/Causes of Illegal Migration
 Migration is often associated with poverty, but other factors also drive the
phenomenon,
 Absence of employment opportunities, particularly youths,
 Climate change and urbanization.
 Employment-seeking migration accounts for the biggest share of intraregional
mobility as youth migrate from one country to another looking for better job
opportunities.
 Widespread population displacement is also linked to violent conflicts and
unstable environmental conditions.
 In the case of SSF, fish scarcity and low catches due to fishing overcapacity
(fisheries agreements, increased IUU fishing. etc,) discourages fishermen, thus
take the backway.
 Scarcity of health and education services, or the desire to reunite with family
members already in other countries
 Peer –to peer influence
 Wants to support family uplift standard of living (out of Poverty move!)

7. Solutions
 In view of this growing crisis, a well-managed, orderly migration framework that
incorporates practical, humane and rights-based operational solutions is needed.
 Strengthening mobility schemes in the region will foster regular and circular migration,
allowing people to work abroad legally, return home safely and participate in the
development of their communities of origin.
 This strategy must also ensure the mobility of cross-border communities, but such mobility
raises border management challenges in the absence of effective identity management
systems and given limited capacities to ensure surveillance and control over the extensive
and porous borders throughout the region.
 Stakeholders will have to take coordinated action to address issues such as threats to public
health, despoiling of natural resources, the loss of critical years of education and job
training.
 An increasing number of migrants are reconsidering migration—especially irregular
migration—and want to make it at home before taking undue risks by going abroad.

8. Additional Info
Report of
RETURNED MIGRANTS’ DEBTS AND THEIR IMPACTS ON REINTEGRATION IN THE GAMBIA (October, 2022)
Summary
 In the recent years, more than 5,000 Gambian migrants returned to the Gambia assisted
by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
 Through the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration program (AVRR), migrants who
have settled abroad permanently or temporarily receive financial and logistical
assistance to reintegrate to their country of origin.
 Economic and social support is often needed as migrants have to find a new role in the
country they left and returned to after several months or years.
 Most migrants who return to the Gambia are indebted. Loans are contracted either in
the context of migrating, or to cover personal and professional expenses.
 They create financial and social constraints which shape the returnees’ ability to
participate actively in the social and economic life of their country of origin.
The central objective of the study was to further understand how debt shapes
the potential for returned migrants’ sustainable reintegration in the Gambia.

9. Cont.
ASSISTED VOLUNTARY RETURN AND REINTEGRATION PROGRAM (AVRR) IN THE GAMBIA
 In the Gambia, the AVRR program started in 2017 with the support of the EU-IOM Joint
Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration, a regional initiative financed by the EU
Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF).
 Between January 2017 and June 2020, 5,691 Gambian nationals were assisted by the IOM
to return to Gambia, and 3,548 benefitted from reintegration assistance.
 The “reintegration package” includes post-arrival assistance, economic support, and
vulnerability assessments, social and psychological support.
 The majority of beneficiaries choose economic support for micro-business projects (84%),
mainly in the sectors of retailing, construction, and transport.

10. Some selected-few Key findings
 Indebtedness is a large-scale phenomenon among returned migrants in the
Gambia: 55 per cent have contracted debts either for migration purposes, or to
carry out personal and professional projects.
 At the moment of the survey, 75 per cent were still indebted (60% had not
started to refund their debt, and 15% had partially repaid them).
 Loans are mostly taken out through informal channels and are interest-free.
 Lenders are mainly relatives and friends.
 Families play a crucial role in the loan-contacting process as “social collaterals”:
they commit to refund the debts in case of default from the main borrower.
 In these cases, the stakes of indebtedness are collective.

11. Migrants’ Lived Experiences
 Migrants experience various humiliation at the hands of smugglers, fellow
travelers, agents, police, and border guards on their journeys in search of better
livelihood.
 These humiliations occur through extortion of money. Robberies, beatings,
kidnapping, rape, forced labor, dehydration, hunger, torture, paying of ransom,
women forced to undress in front of men, death threats, etc.
 According to a quote (Desperate and Dangerous) obtained from a report on human
rights situation of migrants and refugees in Libya (UNHCR, 2018)
 “You are usually either sold as women or girl or pressurized with Arab or African
man either to pay for the journey or to extort your money throughout journey
from day one in the desert until you depart Libya”
A Nigerian woman who returned home in December, 2017

12. JERE JEFF
ABARAKA
THANK YOU ALL
MERCI