Even if they are only nine...

On Saturday, this paper reported that Mali has sent back two people who were deported from France on the same planes they arrived on, questioning whether they were even Malian citizens.

The pair were flown to Bamako using European travel permits or laissez-passez, not passports or other Malian papers, the government said. The government said it could not accept people “simply assumed to be Malian.” The report added that recent reports of a deal with the EU to repatriate failed Malian asylum seekers have sparked protests.

In Malta, nine Malian migrants – identified as such by a Malian identification team – are currently being detained at the Safi detention centre ahead of their planned deportation. A further 15 were recently released after the delegation failed to identify them as Malian.

Earlier in December Malian and European officials signed a deal to expedite the return of migrants to the North African country. The Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders traveled on behalf of the EU to the Malian capital Bamako for discussions with his counterpart Abdoulaye Diop.

The deal includes a total of nine projects – six focused on curbing irregular migration from Mali and three from the wider region – with a total budget of €145.1 million, according to a statement issued by the Dutch foreign ministry.

A $1.9bn European Union-backed fund to tackle African migration was announced in November 2015, around the time of the Valletta summit, with African leaders agreeing to allow the return of failed asylum seekers in return for development aid.

Irregular migration to Europe by Africans has

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climbed in 2016, as the number of migrants using the Central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy has increased by 13 per cent, the EU border agency Frontex said in November. Nigerians and Eritreans constitute the two largest countries of origin for migrants, but more than 10,000 Malian migrants have illegally entered Europe since the start of 2015, according to Frontex.

More than 360,000 people have reached Europe by crossing the Mediterranean last year. Many pass through Mali on their way although Malians are not among the 10 nationalities most likely to attempt the journey.

Mali has denied that it agreed to enable the return from Europe of Malian migrants as part of a deal that was heralded in December by senior European diplomats as the first of its kind.

Mali is still recovering from a 2012 insurgency that saw al-Qaeda-linked groups and ethnic Tuareg rebels seize control of the north of the country. A French counter-insurgency operation returned the region to Malian government control in 2013, but it remains subject to militant attacks. Mali is also part of the wider Sahel region, a vast arid belt stretching across Africa where 41 million young people are at risk of being forced into migrating or joining radical groups, the United Nations’ Sahel envoy Hiroute Guebre Sellassie said in November 2015.

The agreement comes on the back of the Valletta Summit, a high-level meeting between EU and African leaders that took place in Malta in November 2015. The summit resulted in the establishment of an Emergency Trust Fund for Africa aimed at tackling the root causes of irregular migration, to which the EU pledged €1.8 billion.

The EU has proposed partnerships with four other African countries—Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal—in a bid to cut the flow of migrants arriving in Italy. The bloc aims to have the deals ready by 2017, and has stated it will “apply the necessary leverage” in order to secure them—an apparent threat to cut foreign aid to African countries unless they cooperate in reducing irregular migration.

Diop is now apparently denying that a deal was struck and is insisting that the EU joins him in denying the story. But Diop’s denial comes within the context of the internal Malian situation.

Now according to news portal MaliActu, an unnamed migrant has claimed that Malians are being treated like dogs in Malta. “When we asked why,” the migrant added, “we were told that it was our government that authorised this… We are being betrayed by our own government.”

The plight of the Malians who were rounded up to be deported has already raised concern in Malta. Since this repatriation deal was only signed, if indeed it was, with Mali, it is being perceived as a sort of hardening of attitude against anyone born in Mali. The number has now been cut down to nine, but even nine is nine too many. The country is not a pacified country and those deported can find themselves at risk if forcibly sent back.

We said it already, the basis for repatriation must be the criminal behaviour of the individual rather than the country in which they were born. Many of the Malians who were rounded up to be sent home had families, jobs and a life in Malta.

And while we are still rejoicing at the beginning of Malta’s presidency of the EU, few realise that it will now be Malta’s duty, following the Dutch, to implement the repatriation deal.