In 2023, French Guiana became the leading overseas territory in terms of the number of asylum seekers. However, many of these migrants end up in shanty towns with precarious living conditions.
At the end of July, a violent fire ravaged a shanty town in Cayenne. Without causing any casualties, it threw more than 1,000 people out onto the streets, many of them Haitian migrants, revealing the reception and housing crisis affecting Guyana.
In the emergency, the State requisitioned the armed forces of Guyana (FAG) to organize the reception and medical care of the victims in three school gymnasiums in Cayenne. In total, 1,146 people were “taken care of”, the prefect of Guyana, Antoine Poussier, told AFP. “We mobilized all the resources at our disposal”, he said: distribution of food, medical aid, requisition of gymnasiums.
But as the start of the school year approached, the gymnasiums had to be vacated. Among the last 400 people welcomed, some were housed in the municipalities of Sinnamary and Regina, thanks to the mobilization of their mayors.
“Other people found solutions on their own, often with friends. I also suppose that some returned to the squat,” explains Micmase Lubin, the president of the Network of Haitian Actors in Guyana (Rahg), who worked with families affected by the disaster.
Leading overseas territory in terms of number of asylum seekers
Located in the Baduel district, the “squat” (shanty town) in question is a pocket of informal housing on a hill in Cayenne which has expanded over the years, the majority of the occupants being Haitians in an irregular situation.
In recent years, they have flocked to the French territory in South America, which also attracts Afghans and Syrians, to the point that in 2023, Guyana became the leading overseas territory in terms of the number of asylum seekers with 5,200 new applications, according to the annual report from Ofpra.
Many of these migrants end up in shanty towns with precarious living conditions, where fires are frequent. In March, in the middle of Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Guyana, three people were killed in a fire in Baduel.
French Guiana, where 29% of its inhabitants live in extreme poverty and where social housing is largely insufficient, is not equipped to respond to this influx.
“Currently, there is no solution to respond in a dignified manner to all these migrants (…) who arrive on our territory,” repeated Sandra Trochimara, the mayor of Cayenne, in April, after the arrival of Syrian refugees in her commune.
Queues
Even less so when the State and the local authorities pass the buck. The fire at the Baduel squat was the occasion for a verbal exchange between the State and local elected officials, who did not fail to criticize the response of the prefectural authorities. In the Guyanese press, the president of the territorial community of Guyana (CTG), Gabriel Serville, accused the State of having “failed in its mission”.
According to local media Guyaweb, Gabriel Serville and Sandra Trochimara had requested the implementation of an Orsec Emergency Accommodation plan during a meeting in Paris with the chief of staff of the President of the Republic, Patrice Faure.
“We’ve been implementing the Orsec plan for a month now, we’ve done 90% of the work,” Prefect Antoine Poussier responded sharply to AFP, praising the involvement of several associations, including Rahg, “whose long-term commitment has enabled an effective response to the distress of disaster victims.” In a press release published last Thursday, the prefecture announced the end of the “sheltering” of disaster victims.
But the State and local elected officials must already manage another crisis: that of the congestion of the Spada (initial reception structure for asylum seekers) whose queues are getting longer in Cayenne. Sandra Trochimara has requested its relocation to the border towns of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and Saint-Georges-de-l’Oyapock, entry points for asylum seekers.
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