Dreams of a better life deferred, but not forgotten

Exhausted and a little worse for wear, planeloads of Senegalese have returned home from Morocco, their attempts to sneak into Europe having failed but their dreams of the promised land intact. “I’m glad to be back,” said Abdouramane Kande, who was among a first wave of illegal migrants who had volunteered for repatriation. Though glad to be out of Morocco where, he said, conditions were so bad that some people died, Kande hasn’t forgotten why he left his home in 2003. “In Africa, there is so much suffering,” said the 27 year-old native of Kolda, a town in Senegal’s South, near Guinea-Bissau. “We plant seeds but we harvest nothing.” In a communiqué issued on Monday, the head of the UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) echoed these concerns over the lack of opportunity for young people on an increasingly young continent. “I dread to think of the scenes we may be contemplating in, say, twenty years, if we do not make a massive consolidated effort to create jobs and opportunities in West Africa,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah in Dakar, adding that UNOWA was developing recommendations on how to provide more work opportunities for youths. A full report has been promised before December’s Franco-African Summit in Bamako, which will focus on young people like Kande, said UNOWA. Fed up with his lack of prospects, Kande stuffed his life savings into his pocket and set off on a two-year quest through Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Algeria, Morocco and, very briefly, Spain. He was one of hundreds of illegal African migrants who were arrested recently while attempting to enter Spain’s North African enclaves at Ceuta and Melilla. In recent weeks, at least a dozen people were killed in crushes amid a hail of rubber bullets when hundreds of Africans attempted to storm barbed-wire barriers trying to get a toe-hold in Europe’s last remaining territories on the continent. “I hurt my hand on the barbed wire in Melilla,” he said, showing his bandages. “At least I managed to get over and into the city but the Spanish police arrested me and sent me back to Morocco.”

A Senegalese returnee waits to be interviewed by authorities at Dakar airport

Kande’s flight was the first of several this week that have been ferrying hundreds of Senegalese and Malians back home as far as their respective capitals of Dakar and Bamako. The government of Morocco has deportation agreements with Senegal and Mali, according to Moroccan officials who also said that their government had been footing the bill. Few of the immigrants have papers or passports to confirm their nationality, but non Senegalese and Malian nationals were bussed off and deposited in the desert of southern Morocco, near the border with Western Sahara. Humanitarian groups have repeatedly criticised Morocco for dumping illegal migrants at this inhospitable spot without provisions or access to food or water. Last week, Medecins Sans Frontieres denounced this habit as a violation of human rights conventions and said there had been unconfirmed reports of dead bodies in the area. At Dakar’s airport, the returnees were also unhappy with their treatment and said they had been abused by the Moroccan authorities. “The authorities mistreated us, hit us, took our money,” said Thierno Niang who also hails from Kolda. Niang has been caught by the Moroccan police before when he was arrested and deposited in Morocco’s harsh southern desert only to turn around and begin again on his dogged, clandestine journey to Europe. “When they caught us, they threw us into the desert without water or food and, when we got back [north], they tossed us in jail,” he said. Morocco has defended itself against such accusations but has so far failed to come up with a long term solution to the problem, criticise aid workers. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan thinks any successful solution to the current crisis will need to address the root causes of illegal immigration. “What is important is that we do not make a futile attempt to stop movement of people across borders and migration,” he said in Geneva last week. “It will not work.” Back in Senegal for less than an hour, Kande’s dreams of Europe are on hold but not forgotten. “Now I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t want to try again illegally but I can’t stay here either. Maybe they’ll give me a visa.”