Pan African News Agency, October 13, 2005, By Paul Ejime: Dakar - The heart-rending pictures of African youths using ladders to jump over razor-wire fences in their bid to enter Europe demonstrated the desperation of the future generation of a continent to escape what it considers a hopeless situation at home.
But the unorthodox emigration method also highlights the magnitude of a grave African malaise against the backdrop of
the much-touted New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the global lip-service paid to the Millennium Development Goals, especially poverty reduction.
Until now, the immigrants had been dashing across north African borders into Europe, especially Spain because of its more liberal immigration laws, but in the past three weeks, the waves of desperate young Africans, who have lost every hope on their countries had been trying to force their way through.
In the process, security guards on the Morocco-Spain borders have shot and killed at least a dozen of the immigrants.
While authorities in both countries are investigating the shootings, Spain has had to call out army troops with automatic weapons to patrol its two cities Ceuta and Melilla bordering North Africa.
At the last count, some 1,500 new African arrivals had massed at the Spanish enclaves, while 500 of them were reportedly abandoned on the Moroccan side of the Sahara desert without water or food.
Morocco has since started deporting hundreds of the immigrants in batches to Senegal and Mali the two West African countries with the highest numbers.
But nationals of other Sub-Saharan African countries such as Mauritania, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon are also involved albeit in smaller numbers in this craze to escape to Europe.
It is pertinent to note that this latest avalanche of young Africans on an apparent suicide mission are only following in the footsteps of thousands before them, who had either successfully made it, or died in the process.
Thousands have also perished on the Mediterranean Sea trying to cross to Europe with makeshift boats.
Although the bodies of these doomed adventurers are washed ashore almost every week, this has not deterred others from trying to escape the economic hardships in Africa.
Undaunted, however, some of the deported West Africans, after literally being plucked from the jaws of death, insist they would make another attempt to enter Europe if the opportunity presented itself.
Doubtless, the desperation to emigrate cuts across the whole of Africa, and the entire Third World, with skilled personnel also leaving in their numbers for greener pastures under the brain drain syndrome.
Reacting to the development on the Morocco-Spain border UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on Member States to implement immigration laws and obligations humanely.
But while voicing concern on the issue, his Special Representative for West Africa, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, warns the situation today could be "insignificant compared to what we may be facing in a few years time."
According to him, tens of millions of youths in West Africa lack proper employment, and their realisation that their prospects are so limited in their home countries is driving ever more of them to undertake the desperate measures necessary to emigrate clandestinely to Europe or North America.
"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 Ould- Abdallah.
With the numbers of unemployed youth already so high, and with a demographic growth rate in this region already among the highest in the world, he said, the Dakar-based UN Office for West Africa, was working with partners, including ECOWAS and civil society organisations, to propose a series of practical recommendations for youth employment directed at national governments, the private sector and development partners.
For the thousands that have lost their lives on the unpredictable journeys to the "promised land," Ould-Abdallah's recipe is already too late.
The bitter truth is that African leaders have failed the continent and their people, such that, even as perpetrators of the infamous slave trade remain unwilling to consider payment of reparation for the millions of Africans uprooted to Europe and the Americas, a new generation of desperate Africans are today literally volunteering themselves for other forms of slavery.
Apart from the youths embarking on the deadly voyage to Europe there is also the worrisome trend of Africans being trafficked for child labour or prostitution in Europe.
Moroccan officials and their Spanish counterparts are currently engaged in crisis management meetings over the latest immigration nightmare on their common borders, while the European Union has pledged 40 million Euro to assist Rabat in repatriating the intruders.
The two countries have also suggested an Euro-African ministerial conference on immigration to bring together African countries whose citizens had been caught up in the current immigration crisis.
But a long-term solution is unlikely to result from knee-jerk or fire brigade approach, especially with the Moroccan Foreign Affairs and Co-operation Minister Taib Fassi Fihri noting that his country "receives hundreds of our Sub-Saharan brothers and sisters that come through neighbouring Algeria."
Incidentally, how to handle the world's nearly 200 million migrants was the subject of a report discussed by the UN last week.
The 19-member Global Commission on International Migration, established almost two years ago by Annan and a number of
governments, was charged with developing a policy to deal with migration issues.
On receiving the report on "Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action," the UN chief admitted that migration posed "one of our most important challenges" in the 21st century.
The report, which noted that migration "makes a large but largely unrecognised contribution to the global economy," recommended some principles to guide action on policies.
One of the recommendations is that "States, exercising their sovereign right to decide who enters their territory, should co-operate with each other in an effort to stem irregular migration, while fully respecting the rights of migrants and refugees and readmitting those citizens who return to their home country."
By and large, it is the huge gulf existing between the rich and the poor countries that is driving the pull and push factors behind migration.
Until these are addressed by both sides of the divide, it can be seen that even skilled workers in poor nations are becoming as desperate as unskilled hands and economic refugees in their determination to bail out no matter the level of obstacles placed on their way.
