Africa: Another Host of Migration Tragedy

Spanish Translation of the Week

The discovery of the remains of 92 migrants in the African desert has shocked the world and drawn attention to the plight of African migrants. There are several migrations routes that span the continent.

El hallazgo de 92 cadáveres en desiertos africanos otra vez conmovió al mundo y alerta sobre esta problemática. Cuáles son las rutas de emigración a través del continente.

This article has been translated from Spanish. Click here to read the original version on Infobae.

Last week, the bodies of 92 migrants were found in the desert of Niger, 10 miles south of the Algerian border. The victims were reported missing late in September, after they left the town of Arlit, 200 kilometers from the border with Algeria, in two trucks. They were heading to Tamanrassett. Before crossing the border, however, one of the vehicles broke down and the group decided to send the other back to Arlit to get spare parts. In an unfortunate turn of events, the second truck also experienced some mechanical difficulties before reaching its destination. Travelers looking for a solution disintegrated in the desert, and only a group of ten people made it back to Arlit.

The victims who died of exhaustion and dehydration were pursuing the same dream as the hundreds that drowned last month in the waters of the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa: to escape misery.

In this case there, the victims were not Somalis, Syrians or Eritreans. They were Nigeriens who sought to escape their country's crippling economic crisis. Nigeria is a state of 17 million people, with an area of 1,260,000 square kilometers. Its inhabitants suffer from famine, drought, industrial pollution and a recent scourge of Islamic fundamentalism.

According to information released by the newspaper El País, about 80,000 immigrants cross the Sahara desert in Niger each year, according to data from the United Nations Agency for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

"They are economic migrants. They are looking for work. They're so impoverished that they take the risk," the Agency's director, John Ging, told BBC Newsday.

"Migrants from Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivy Coast, Congo ... they all pass through here. And every day there are more," says Serge Xavier Oga, a journalist who works with Caritas in Arlit. "Those found last week in the desert were from Arlit. Many of them depend on agriculture, and there are no crops. They probably wanted to go to Lampedusa."

Until a few months ago, migration trends in Niger were different.  The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that the outbreak of the Libyan civil war in 2011 forcibly expelled some 100,000 Nigerian immigrants. They were forced to return home.

"The vast majority of Nigerians had migrated to Libya, an Arab country, to support their families through remittances. Most of them worked in Libya as unskilled labor in agriculture and construction," Abibatou Wane, IOM representative in Niger, told El País.

Besides increasingly frequent immigration tragedies, northern Niger faces serious environmental problems due to the open-area uranium mines present in the country. Niger is the fifth largest producer of uranium in the world, the first in Africa, and the owner of 5 % of total global reserves. However, despite the economic opportunities this resource creates, it also negatively impacts the health of the more than 110,000 people of Arlit.

Article translated by Natalia Diaz, Staff Intern for the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.

Photo attributed to Flickr user Jenvan W.