The West African country of Mali is a migration hub with traditional routes within Africa to Arabic countries that stretch back to antiquity. This is partly a result of the weakness of the economy but also an expression of societal traditions of a culture of mobility entirely separate from the nation state. As in many West African countries, people are generally free to travel in Mali and state borders or passports have had little significance since post-colonial independence.
Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. The minimum salary (salaire minimum) is approximately 12,300 CFA francs (35 Euro) for an unskilled worker and approximately 50,000 CFA francs per month for a skilled worker. Many of the unofficial convoys of refugees that cross the Sahara in pick-ups to reach hidden harbours on the North African coast start out from the desert regions in North-Eastern Mali.
Because Mali is not only the homeland but also a transit country for many migrants from the southern part of West Africa, European foreign policy has selected the country for an experiment in migration management. It shares the attitude of the former colonial power, France, that treats francophone West Africa and Mali in particular as a Special Economic Zone. Since European demand for cheap African labour has dwindled and the 1990 Schengen Agreement ended the visa waiver for Europe, Mali is now treated as a peripheral dumping ground to which unwanted, ‘undocumented’ people are deported from Europe. For some time now, not only deported migrant workers from Mali land at Bamako airport – those from its West African neighbours do as well.
Europe’s borders in Africa
The Office for Migration Management (Centre d’Information et de Gestion des Migrations au Mali) in the capital Bamako is currently drafting models for a selective migration procedure on African soil designed to keep the majority of prospective migrants in Africa and restrict access to the EU labour market to just a few. The EU is targeting existing self-help associations of deportees to make use of their local and regional support networks and to appear to be embedded in the local community. Solidarity networks such as the Association Malienne des Expulsés (AME), an association of deported persons, has so far resisted these attempts to ‘promote staying here’ (promotion du mieux être ici). AME is a partner of medico international. It provides direct assistance to deportees at the Mali desert borders and Bamako airport and is also directly engaged in Mali’s internal politics as an organisation of affected people . Ousmane Diarra, AME’s president, described in Mali’s parliament the 21st-century odyssey undertaken by migrants and the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people caught between structural poverty and forced immobility in the following terms: ‘After arriving in our homeland and completing border formalities we are left to fend entirely for ourselves. After so many years spent elsewhere, we deportees are left completely alone. Most of us had to leave our wives, children and property behind. Destitution has become part of our life. Now we are back in Mali we think of our other life far away that lies in tatters. So many of our young brothers and sisters have migrated from rural areas and then emigrated, only to end up on the desert roads. If they don’t drown in the sea these migrants return as deportees after suffering long periods of imprisonment, harassment, violence and hunger. They are passed from border to border only to be abandoned in Northern Mali. They are left alone to live in the wild. It is a living hell.’
More than just acute humanitarian aid
There are many aspects to the work of the West African Network for Migrants’ Rights. The AME is a self-help group of former deportees in Bamako looking after those deported migrants dumped at the airport every night by European airlines. But the organisation is also responding to the increasingly visible European migration policy in the region by opposing the tightening up of border controls in sub-Saharan West Africa, which was formerly entirely exempt from EU visa requirements with a cross-border solidarity. Working jointly with another of medico’s partners, the Mauritanian human rights organisation Association Mauritanienne des Droits de l’Homme (AMDH) in conjunction with human rights defenders in North-Eastern Morocco, AME is attempting to build up a transnational solidarity network. The concern is not limited to emergency assistance for deportees or direct cooperation, such as in the Mauritanian-Malian border area where people are found half-dying of thirst every day and cared for, but also with creating a public opposition movement defending migrants’ rights through transnational workshops and demonstrations. In Bamako the AME is also providing a particular type of development assistance: with its advice and support, the Association des Refoulés d’Afrique Centrale au Mali (ARACEM) was founded, a self-help group of deportees from Central African countries (Cameroon, both Congolese republics, the Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon), that attempts to provide hundreds of stranded migrants with essential supplies (medicines, water, food). medico also provides them with initial assistance to tide them over.
Our partner network in West Africa is starting to organise itself. Its staffing and financial resources are still far too small to be able to care for even a fraction of those who are flown out by aeroplane, detained at desert borders between African countries or captured in the boats along Europe’s southern coastline. But an important step has been taken: the ‘voiceless’ people have started to find their voice and are increasingly demanding their rights from their own authorities, who are all too ready to defer to Europe. In doing so, they criticise not only the inhumanity of the European border regime, but also the neoliberal European economic reality which allows the free movement of goods but restricts the movement of human beings. They demand that they too should have freedom of residence and movement to Europe.