New flow of Sudanese migrants to Europe via Morocco and Algeria

The number of would-be Sudanese migrants to Europe, passing through Morocco, has increased dramatically as the passage through Libya has become increasingly difficult. To write it today is the French quitidiano Le Monde which, in detail, tells the story of some who survived a recent shipwreck.


Issam has a hand in plaster, shoulder pains and a slowly healing head injury. In Casablanca, the 23-year-old Sudanese is continuing his convalescence, a month after the attempted forced entry into Melilla, a Spanish enclave in northern Morocco, during which 27 migrants died according to Rabat and at least XNUMX according to the Moroccan Rights Association. humans (AMDH).

Issam retains only a few violent images of this tragedy. He remembers that while he was climbing over the fence he was hit by a police baton. He fell and fainted. When he regained consciousness, he was put on a bus and sent to the south of the country. He has since moved to Casablanca.

He wanders the streets with his travel companions, who were among the 1.500 migrants who tried to enter the Spanish possession on June 24 - the only land border, along with Ceuta,
of the European Union on the African continent -. Local associations were able to establish that most of them were Sudanese.


While their presence in Morocco had previously attracted little attention, that day their numbers revealed a new phenomenon: a change in the migration path of these citizens, who generally come from Darfur and Kordofan, two regions tormented by conflict.

Some also come from South Sudan, a country ravaged by civil war.

"The presence of Sudanese in Morocco is quite new ", confirmation Hassan Ammari, president of the association Aides aux migrants in situation vulnérable (AMSV), in Oujda (north-east).

"The first waves came from the Algerian border in the summer of 2021. Before that, their numbers were marginal."

"Historically, this country bordering Sudan was the route for the Sudanese who reached Italy by crossing the central Mediterranean", he claims Sara Prestianni of the NGO EuroMedRights. But the growing violence suffered by migrants in Libyan territory has forced them to take other paths, according to the migration expert. Quote "the strong political instability in Libya, with the militias that control the territory and for which migrants are cash, the repression in the detention centers, the increased role of the Libyan coast guard, to which Italy has entrusted border control and wiretapping at sea ".

Many have therefore decided to make these major detours through Algeria and Morocco, encouraged also by word of mouth and passed from trafficker to trafficker.

In June, theUnited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Morocco counted 1350 Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees, up from just 150 the previous year. On the contrary, the number of Sudanese migrants arriving in Italy, particularly from Libya, has declined in recent years.

“In 2018 they represented 7% of arrivals. Today they no longer even appear in the top ten nationalities ", observes Sara Prestianni. Their example shows how the strengthening of a border does not
do nothing but shift routes. In this case, these migrants had to travel a longer road, with ever greater dangers. In addition to the violence suffered in their country, which would give the right to refugee status, they have to endure transit for lack of legal access to the European territory.

The terrible story of Issam - suppression and violence in the light of the sun

Issam left Darfur in 2018. He initially headed for Egypt, then, unable to reach Europe from there, he continued on to Libya.

The traffickers he had paid to cross the border at the Saloum crossing took him into the desert, to a house guarded by armed men who demanded a ransom and, failing to obtain it, subjected him to forced labor. He fled after six months and went to Tobruk (northeast). To accumulate some savings, he found a job in a welding shop. A year later, he had collected the sum requested by the smugglers to reach Italy: 3.000 Libyan dinars (600 euros) for the 1.250 km journey to Tripoli, 8.000 for the crossing of the Mediterranean.


On the way to the Libyan capital, the pickup stopped at Beni Ulid, 160km southeast of Tripoli. “This was not expected. There I was very afraid, I saw Africans sold as slaves ", tells. "They took me to a house, asked me for 2.000 dinars, threatened to tie me up, beat me and send videos to my family to send the money ".

Issam pays and heads for the coast. She sets sail from Zouara one evening in spring 2021 on a wooden boat with around 250 migrants on board. The coast of Lampedusa is in sight when the boat is intercepted by the Libyan coast guard. Issam is sent to prison, where he will remain for two months.

“Everything that happens there is inhumane. Prisoners are dying of hunger, the sick are not treated. We are always defeated. With other Sudanese, you have formed a group to escape. “One morning we broke down the door. The police shot at us, there were deaths ".

After the prison, he is put on the trail of the western road by smugglers. He paid them 4.000 Libyan dinars for the passage to Algeria. In about ten days he reached the border town of Magnia, one of the main departure points for migrants to Morocco. Issam is taken to a "ghetto", a home for illegal immigrants, where he is asked another 150 euros to cross the
border. He succeeds on the second attempt.

With the Algerian border on one side and the Moroccan barrier on the other, "This border is a complicated passage", underlines, on condition of anonymity, a humanitarian worker in Morocco who knows the flows in this region well: "Migrants often pass through the mountains. They can be robbed, arrested by the Algerian or Moroccan police, who send them back to Algeria. Some are drafted into drug trafficking to serve as mules. In Oujda, on the Moroccan side, these survivors meet with the refoulé of Ceuta and Melilla. They try to survive on the street. Some find refuge in the church of the city, others are taken to "ghetto houses" where is it "are hosted but have to pay a so-called 'community tax'", Continues our source: “If you don't pay, you don't go out. We have seen everything, violence, death threats ... ". For fear of being arrested, others go to Casablanca or Rabat, or settle in the fields of the forest of Gourougou, near Melilla, which for years has been a precarious refuge for many migrants. They await the next attempt to cross the border of the Spanish enclave which, with its three barbed wire and increasingly militarized, has become difficult to cross over the years.
In Casablanca, Issam waits to be reinstated. Then he will take the road to Melilla or Ceuta. Morocco is not a country where he can settle. “Here we sleep on the street. We have no documents, no work, no future. There is war in my country. Trying to reach Europe again? "I have no choice"he says with a desperate sigh. Even at the risk of her life. "I will try as often as necessary ”.

New flow of Sudanese migrants to Europe via Morocco and Algeria