Migrants flock to France’s African island to give birth
At first glance, there is little extraordinary about the Central Hospital of Mayotte CHM). Save for the palm trees, and the dramatic views across volcanic hills and reef-bound lagoons, it could be a health facility just about anywhere in the First World.
Yet the CHM has a story like no other. Political rows have been fought over it, people have died in droves trying to reach it and Marine le Pen, the nationalist politician, has acquired a following among a group of black French Muslims in part because of it.
The CHM, situated on a French island colony off the east African coast, boasts a singular claim to fame that is at the root of all these passions.
Of all the hospitals in the European Union, none delivers as many babies – 9,800 last year.
It is not a statistic that the hospital’s overworked staff are proud of, however, for the record is eclipsed by another. Three-quarters of the mothers giving birth on its maternity ward are foreign, most of them illegal migrants hoping that their children will gain French citizenship by being born on French soil.
In recent years, Europe’s leaders have been preoccupied by a migrant crisis that has brought tragedy to the Mediterranean, polarised politics and galvanised the far Right.
Yet, little noticed on the continent, another European migrant crisis has unfolded in the Indian Ocean, where tens of thousands every year risk their lives to reach a tiny and overburdened patch of EU soil.
For many, the CHM is their target. As doctors scurried from baby to baby on a maternity ward that delivers 25 to 35 infants a day, a hospital administrator surveyed the scene.
“The quality of healthcare we are able to provide is deteriorating,” she said. “It cannot continue like this.”
Mayotte is an oddity. In 1975, three of the four islands in the Comoro archipelago voted to break away from France to form the Union of Comoros.
But Mayotte, with deeper historical ties to France, declined.
Four decades later, the fortunes of the two Comoro territories could not be more starkly different. As Comoros became one of Africa’s poorest states, wilting under misrule, insecurity and 21 coups or coup attempts in 43 years, Mayotte prospered, at least relatively.
Its people may earn only a third of what their fellow citizens in mainland France do, but they are still 14 times richer than their Comoran former countrymen.
Little wonder, then, that Mayotte has become a lure for Comorians.
“For people living on the other islands, Mayotte looks like the United States,” said Kamal, a journalist on Anjouan, the closest of the three Comoran islands to Mayotte.
Life on Anjouan is precarious and tough, but for the people, escape is tantalisingly close. Mayotte – with its free healthcare and education – is just 40 miles away. An average of 10 fibreglass boats – kwasa-kwasa – strike out for the island every day.
Some do not make it. Human rights groups estimate that as many as 20,000 Comorians have drowned in these waters since 1995. Even so, migrants are willing to pay 400 euros for a one-way ticket.
Many are pregnant women, trying to make their way to the CHM. Given the challenges facing health facilities in Comoros it is not hard to see why.
For Ahmada Moustafa, the possibility of a French passport opens up a world of opportunities for Aymen, her three-day-old son. “He will be able to do far more things in life than I ever could,” she said.
Unlike many in the waiting room, Mrs Moustafa was not fresh off a kwasa-kwasa, but had spent much of her life living as an illegal immigrant – until she recently acquired resident status – in a sprawling Mayotte slum.
These slums are growing every day. Of the 256,000 people crammed onto Mayotte’s 144 square miles, more than half are foreign and 42 per cent are there illegally.
A backlash has been inevitable. So grave is the strain on public services that many schools have to operate two shifts a day. For those who deliver at the CHM, the resentment is palpable.
“I wanted an epidural but I couldn’t get one because the anaesthetist was too busy,” said Nema, a Mahoran mother of two-day-old twins.
The island has been hit by antimigrant protests this year, while Ms Le Pen won 43 per cent of the Mahoran vote in last year’s presidential election after championing tough antiimmigration policies – an extraordinary showing in France’s most Muslim region.
Emmanuel Macron’s government has considered radical solutions, including giving the CHM extraterritorial status, excising it from France, to stop babies born there from qualifying for citizenship.
In September, France passed a law requiring the parents of babies born in Mayotte to have been resident there for at least three months.
The authorities have stepped up deportations, expelling 18,000 illegal migrants this year – nearly as many as mainland France.
But getting back to Mayotte is not so difficult. For every kwasa-kwasa intercepted by the police, four make it through, locals reckon.
Abdallah Ahmed, who lives in the slum of Vahibe, has been deported to Anjouan 10 times. But he keeps returning, determined to stay with his children, because life, even in the shanty town, is better than it is at home.
Radical solutions include excising the hospital from France to stop babies becoming citizens