Algeria has pushed back nearly 20,000 migrants to Niger since January, according to an NGO

Since January, Algeria has pushed back to neighboring Niger nearly 20,000 African migrants including women and children, it was learned on Monday 1^is September AFP with the local NGO Alarme Phone Sahara. This organization, which rescues migrants in the desert between Algeria and Niger, has identified “exactly 19,798 people turned back from January 2024 to August 2024”according to its communications manager Moctar Dan Yaye.

Since 2014, irregular migrants from Niger and other African countries, including women and minors, have been regularly turned back from Algeria, a transit point to Europe. These migrants are expelled “in brutal conditions” with “in the worst case, fatal consequences”denounces Alarme Phone Sahara, in a report published at the end of August. “Migrants are arrested during raids in towns, at their homes, at their workplaces or at the Tunisian border and are grouped together in Tamanrasset (southern Algeria), before being transported in trucks to Niger.”says Moctar Dan Yaye.

The Nigerien returnees are transported to Assamaka, the first Nigerien village, where they are welcomed by local authorities. But migrants from other African countries are disembarked at “point zero”, a desert area marking the border between the two countries, and must walk 15 kilometers to reach Assamaka in extreme weather conditions, according to Moctar Dan Yaye.

“Many reports of abuse” and “violence”

After being registered by the Niger police in Assamaka, they were housed in UN and Italian transit centres and were gradually transferred to other centres in Arlit and Agadez, two large towns in northern Niger. “We have many reports of abuse, violence and confiscation of migrants’ property by Algerian forces”deplores the head of communications at Alarme Phone Sahara.

In April, the Nigerien military authorities in power for a year in Niamey summoned the Algerian ambassador to « protester » against “the violent character” of these repatriation and deportation operations. In turn, Algiers summoned the Niger ambassador while judging “without foundations” the allegations of the Nigerian authorities.

In November 2023, Niger’s military regime repealed a 2015 law criminalizing migrant trafficking. Since then, “many people move freely” on “the roads” of migration “without fear of reprisals” that they were previously facing, the association said in its report.