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Tunis, Tunisia – Thirty-two-year-old Edna Mosse left Freetown, Sierra Leone, with her four children three years ago.
“It is not easy there. There is no food, no medicine, no school,” she said. “The police used to beat and rape our brothers and sisters. I saw this.”
Moïse is among the thousands who flee Sierra Leone each year to escape corrupt officials and violent unrest; She now lives in a small tarpaulin and wooden shelter in a micro-hut city built outside the Tunis offices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
He plans to take his family to Europe in one of the small, precarious metal boats that carry poor and destitute people to Europe.
“The children will cost around 1,000 Tunisian dinars ($320). I'll pay about 2,500 dinars ($800),'' Moïse says hopefully. She knows that the country she is seeking asylum has made deals to keep her and people like her out and has received funding from Europe, but she is still willing to try.
Clash of principles and real politics?
Moïse's story is echoed in the IOM tent city and another encampment, where mostly Sudanese refugees and migrants trade with each other for food and scraps, and an enterprising young man sits behind his sewing machine waiting for customers.
They are all fleeing unspeakable horrors, trying to get themselves and families to safety, or trying to support families back home – people struggling against a system that wants them to go away. Working hard to stop from.
Europe's own authorities are on the opposing side of these persecuted, desperate people making brutal journeys to try to reach the rule of law promised in Europe.
European lawmakers have advocated for a recent 7.4 billion euro ($8 billion) agreement between the EU and Egypt to shore up the walls of “Fortress Europe,” a buffer zone along the coasts of the southern Mediterranean. Furthers the goal of the building block. ,
With EU parliamentary elections coming up later this year and the arrival of brown and black people increasingly becoming scapegoats for popular anger over faltering economies, the European Commission intends to keep the issue of migration at the forefront .
Europe's policy of externalization, that is, pushing its border concerns back to neighboring countries, is not new.
From around 2015, when the collapse of Syria resulted in record levels of migration to Europe, the bloc actively tried to sidestep its migration concerns, with the humanitarian consequences of this an afterthought.
❕This was the moment the LCG-302, a Libyan coast guard boat funded by the European Union, casually surfaced. #GeoBarents RHIBS is putting survivors at risk as well @MSF Teams.
Thanks for keeping an eye on the sky, Seabird!
🎥Caroline Sobel/@seawatch_intl pic.twitter.com/4fuwS82IcU
– MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) March 17, 2024
“There is a clear conflict between what the EU calls its principles and the states it is dealing with in the Mediterranean,” said Ahlam Chemlali, a researcher on migration and externalization at the Danish Institute for International Studies.
“The further you travel away from the Mediterranean, the more this conflict can escalate,” he said. he said, referring to where most irregular arrivals come from, such as war-torn Sudan, or states such as Sierra Leone, Nigeria or Mauritania.
Over the past six months, the EU has supplied 305 million euros ($331 million) to Tunisia and Egypt – specifically to strengthen border security.
Additional reporting over the weekend suggests the total amount for Tunisia could be far higher, with 278 million euros ($301 million) expected to be sent to the North African country over the next three years, with most of it earmarked for security services. Has gone.
This is in addition to ongoing funding from Italy and the EU for the Libyan coast guard and several camps on the Libyan coast, which have been in place since 2017.
'quite clever'
This effort to keep the “migration problem” on the southern shores of the Mediterranean has trapped refugees and migrants in the jaws of militias, human traffickers, North African racism, and authorities who move them around to keep them out of sight. Go, even if it means their deaths in the desert border areas.
“Europe should cease viewing its southern neighborhood as a safety menace and finally handing over energy to warlords and autocrats with little management or oversight.
“It successfully serves to offer them management, as a result of each time they wish to extract more cash from them, or different political concessions, they flood Europe with a wave of migrants,” stated Tarek Megerissi, a senior coverage fellow on the Council of Europe. Able to threatening.” on international relations, who not too long ago wrote a paper rejecting most circumstances of externalization.
The EU is presently planning to take a position round 150 billion euros ($163 billion) in West Africa as a part of its International Gateway bundle, billed as a bid to create sustainable improvement and speed up the inexperienced and digital transition. Has been marketed in.
Italy, below the brand new Mattei plan, has earmarked 5.5 billion euros ($6 billion) to work with African efforts to create sustainable initiatives to help potential migrants within the area.
In return, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says, Italy will put money into Africa's power business, revitalizing its economic system and positioning Italy as an power gateway to Europe.
“It's really fairly intelligent,” Megerisi stated, explaining that Meloni's guarantees to put money into Africa current a progressive entrance that’s ostensibly targeted on improvement in supply nations.
“For younger individuals, there are some indicators that there could also be an financial future of their nation, there are actual incentives to remain, given how harmful the choice is,” he stated.
“However with out broader European help, she’s going to fall again on externalization initiatives like Tunisia, Egypt.”
Nevertheless, as is commonly the case, the satan is within the particulars. A few of the migrants Al Jazeera spoke to in Tunis have been hopeful that EU cash given to governments mired in civil battle or steeped in corruption would draw them again to their nations of origin.
Kilin Dew, thirty-one, from South Sudan, doesn't agree with one factor. Requested how his president would react to an analogous assist bundle given to others, he laughed and stated: “He'll stick with it!”