Europe’s Extreme Border Externalization

African migrants travel on a boat to Europe (Wikimedia Commons).

In North Africa, a partnership between the EU and North African countries has led to the detention of thousands of migrants who now find themselves stranded in desolate areas such as deserts to prevent them from crossing the border into Europe. The EU provided millions of euros to Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania, and Morocco for their work, claiming relocating migrants there would prevent human trafficking. Human rights groups, however, are not convinced. 

Europe is embarking on a series of externalization policies that seek to curb the amount of irregular migrations in the continent—a number that has gone as high as 355,300 people according to the EU. In 2022, the EU published a press release that highlighted how it wanted to bolster its partnership with Africa to stop irregular migrations, smuggling, and human trafficking. Le Monde found that this partnership took the form of the EU giving money and vehicles (in the case of Spain and Italy) to North African countries that used the resources to pursue migrant ships and detain the migrants aboard them. After corralling migrants into European-paid white vans, North African forces  dumped the migrants in remote places where they would face harsh conditions such as starvation, thirst, and even violent assaults. Some migrants were also sold, tortured, or killed. On top of these testimonies, there have been accusations that authorities partake in racial profiling when targeting migrants, El País reported. 

Groups such as the Human Rights Watch have criticized the EU for putting these policies in place. The EU, as well as North African countries, have denied that their efforts have resulted in human rights violations and asserted that the migrants have been treated properly. But the EU has conceded that it has not conducted human rights assessments and that it is “impossible” to regulate how the funding was used by African countries, according to The Washington Post.