Niger battling migrant flow and droughts
ANKARA – The growing flow of migrants into drought-prone Niger, whose own population often struggles with hunger, raises tough questions about why people are moving from one risky place to another and how to head off related tensions.
Intensifying conflict, political instability and militant groups like Boko Haram are driving people into Niger from surrounding Libya, Chad, Nigeria and Mali, according to Barbara Bendandi, an environment expert with the International Organisation for Migration.
“It is not the usual push-pull factor of migration but a newer phenomenon where people are migrating into a country already extremely vulnerable which has nothing to offer the migrants,” she said at a UN Convention to Combat Desertification conference in the Turkish capital Ankara last month.
Migrants from sub-Saharan African states who reach Niger enter one of Africa ’ s poorest countries – a vast arid expanse on the edge of the desert consistently ranked at the bottom of the UN Human Development Index.
Its booming population depends on rain-fed agriculture, but the amount of land used for arable farming and pasture has shrunk dramatically in the past 50 years.
Meanwhile frequent droughts have impoverished many Nigeriens.
Historically a gateway between north and sub-Saharan Africa, Niger shares borders with seven countries. Bendandi said it is a transit country for some people, with more than 2 000 migrants leaving Niger each week this year to travel north to Libya or further to Europe. European Union leaders are meeting African counterparts in Malta this week, hoping aid pledges can slow the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from the world ’ s poorest continent to wealthy Europe.
Fatchima Noura, a Nigerien civil society leader working on refugees and food security, noted that some incoming migrants stay in Niger for a couple of years to work as domestic help or set up a small business to earn enough to proceed further north. Others pay traffickers to get them across borders or become involved in contraband trade in weapons and drugs, although the numbers are unclear.