Algeria continues its mass expulsions. Since April, more than 16,000 irregular African migrants have been pushed back to Niger, according to local Nigerien authorities. A frantic pace, which already represents more than half of the total expulsions recorded in 2024, reports InfoMigrants.
Sunday June 1 and Monday June 2, 1,466 people arrived in Assamaka, a desert town in the north of Niger, on the border with Algeria. Among them, 688 nationals from several West African countries, including 239 Nigeriens, were identified in the first convoy. The next day, 778 Nigeriens, including 222 minors, arrived aboard 13 trucks and a van.
The conditions of these forced returns raise strong criticism. The NGO Alarme Phone Sahara, very active in the region, denounces “violation of human rights” and calls for an immediate end to the raids. “Migrants are often abandoned in the desert, with disregard for their safety”alerts the organization, which speaks of inhumane and systematic practices.
30,000 evictions in 2024
The Algerian authorities are displaying double standards. On the one hand, they claim to work for the integration of foreigners on their soil; on the other, they regularly organize collective expulsions in desert areas, where migrants must survive without water, food or shelter, in temperatures often exceeding 47°C.
Abandoned in the so-called “Zero Point” zone, around fifteen kilometers from the Nigerien border, the exiles travel on foot through the desert to the transit center of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Assamaka. A place that is always full, and where reception conditions are no longer sufficient to meet needs.
Niger, a transit country for years, now fears a humanitarian crisis. In May, Niamey announced that it wanted to intensify voluntary repatriations with the help of the IOM. Objective: allow 4,000 migrants to return home by July. But the process is slow, weighed down by the bureaucracy of the countries of origin – obligatory videoconferences, long and complex forms, administrative delays.
With more than 30,000 expulsions recorded in 2024, Algeria is breaking a sad record. On the ground, associations are sounding the alarm about the scale of the humanitarian crisis playing out on the edge of the desert. Irony of a two-speed migratory face-off – on the other side of the Mediterranean, France is struggling to send nationals back to Algeria under an obligation to leave the territory.
