“We need help, not security tools”

On a sweltering March day, I arrive at the dusty checkpoint in the Senegalese village of Moussala, on the border with Mali. Dozens of trucks and motorbikes wait in line to cross this major transit point. After asking for months, in vain, for permission from the government to access the border post, I hope that the head of the post will explain to me to what extent European funding influences their operations. Refusing to go into details, he confirms to me that his team recently received training and equipment from the European Union (EU) which they use regularly. As proof, a small diploma and a trophy, both stamped with the European flag, sit on his desk.

The creation and equipment of border posts like that of Moussala constitute key elements of the partnership between the EU and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In addition to the surveillance technologies provided to the branches of the National Division for the Fight against Smuggling of Migrants (DNLT, the result of a partnership between Senegal and the EU), each border post is equipped with migration data analysis systems. and biometric facial and fingerprint recognition systems.

Officially, the goal is to create what European officials call an IBM African system, namely “Integrated Border Management” (in French, “integrated border management”). In a 2017 statement, the IOM project coordinator in Senegal said: “Integrated border management is more than just a concept, it’s a culture. » He apparently had in mind an ideological change for the whole of Africa, which he believed would not fail to embrace the European vision of migration.

Surveillance Technologies

Concretely, this IBM system consists of merging Senegalese databases (which contain sensitive biometric data) with data from international police agencies (such as Interpol and Europol). The goal: to allow governments to know who crosses which border and when. Such a system, experts warn, can quickly facilitate illegal evictions and other abuses.

The risk is anything but hypothetical. In 2022, a former agent of the Spanish intelligence services told the newspaper El Confidential that the authorities of several African countries “use technologies provided by Spain to persecute and repress opposition groups, activists and citizens critical of the government”. And to add that the Spanish government was perfectly aware of this.

According to a European Commission spokesperson, “all security-related projects funded by the EU include a human rights training and capacity-building component”. According to this same person, the EU carries out human rights impact assessments before and during the implementation of these projects. But when, a few months ago, Dutch MEP Tineke Strik asked to see these impact studies, three different Commission services sent her official replies saying they did not have them. Furthermore, according to one of these services, “there is no regulatory obligation to do so”.

In Senegal, civil liberties are increasingly under threat and these surveillance technologies are all the more at risk of being misused. Remember that in 2021, Senegalese security forces killed fourteen people demonstrating against the government; Over the past two years, several Senegalese opposition figures and journalists have been imprisoned for criticizing the government, discussing sensitive political issues or having “spread fake news”. In June, after Ousmane Sonko, the main opponent of President Macky Sall, was sentenced to two years in prison for “youth corruption”, strong protests were 23 dead.

“If I wasn’t a police officer, I would leave too”

When I was about to give up talking to the local police, in Tambacounda, another major transit point not far from the borders with Mali and Guinea, a plainclothes immigration policeman agreed to speak to me on condition of anonymity. . It is from the Tambacounda region, which is among the poorest in Senegal, that most of the immigration candidates come. There, everyone, including the policeman, knows at least one person who tried to set sail for Europe.

“If I wasn’t a police officer, I would leave too”, he tells me through an interpreter, after hastily leaving the border post. EU investments “haven’t changed anything at all”he continues, noting that he regularly sees people from Guinea passing through Senegal and entering Mali with the aim of reaching Europe.

Since its independence in 1960, Senegal has been hailed as a model of democracy and stability, while many of its neighbors have been plagued by political dissension and coups. Be that as it may, more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line and the lack of prospects pushes the population to migrate, particularly to France and Spain. Today, remittances from the diaspora represent nearly 10% of Senegalese GDP. It should also be noted that, Senegal being the most westerly country in Africa, many West Africans find themselves there when they flee the economic problems and the violence of the regional ramifications of Al-Qaeda and of the Islamic State (IS), which has so far forced nearly 4 million people from their homes.

“The EU cannot solve problems by building walls and handing out moneythe policeman told me. She can finance whatever she wants, that’s not how she will end immigration. » The money it spends on bolstering police and borders, he says, goes little more than buying air-conditioned cars for police in border towns.

Meanwhile, services for deportees – such as protection and reception centers – are severely underfunded. At the Rosso border post, hundreds of people are deported every week from Mauritania. Mbaye Diop works with a handful of volunteers from the center that the Red Cross has set up on the Senegalese side to accommodate these expelled people: men, women and children who sometimes have injuries to their wrists, caused by handcuffs, and elsewhere on the body, left behind by the beatings of the Mauritanian police. But Mbaye Diop has no resources to help them. The approach is not at all the right one, he whispers: “We need humanitarian aid, not security tools. »

The carrot method

To curb immigration, the EU is also testing the carrot method: it offers subsidies to local businesses and professional training to those who stay or return home. The road leading to Tambacounda is punctuated by dozens and dozens of advertising panels praising European projects.

In reality, the offers are not as good as the EU announced. Binta Ly, 40, knows something about this. In Tambacounda, she runs a small shop selling local fruit juices and toiletries. She did a year of law at university, but the cost of living in Dakar forced her to abandon her studies and look for work in Morocco. After living seven years in Casablanca and Marrakech, she returned to Senegal, where she recently opened her store.

In 2022, Binta Ly submitted a grant request to the Reception, Orientation and Monitoring Office (BAOS) which opened the same year in Tambacounda, within the local branch of the Regional Development Agency ( ARD). Funded by the EU, BAOS offer subsidies to small Senegalese businesses with the aim of dissuading the population from emigrating. Binta Ly aimed to open a printing, copying and laminating service in her shop, ideally located next to a primary school. She obtained a grant of 500,000 CFA francs (762 euros) – a quarter of the budget she had requested – but regardless, she was very enthusiastic. Except that a year later, she still had not received a single franc.

Across Senegal, BAOS have obtained a total envelope of 1 billion CFA francs (1.5 million euros) from the EU to finance these subsidies. But the Tambacounda branch only received 60 million CFA francs (91,470 euros), explains Abdoul Aziz Tandia, director of the local ARD office. Barely enough to finance 84 businesses in a region of more than half a million inhabitants. According to a spokesperson for the European Commission, the distribution of grants actually began in April. The fact is that Binta Ly received a printer and a laminator, but no computer to go with it. “I am happy to have this help, she says. The problem is that they take a very long time to come and that these delays upset my whole business plan. »

“Voluntary” return

Abdoul Aziz Tandia admits that the BAOS do not meet demand. This is partly the fault of the bureaucracy, he continues: Dakar must approve all projects and the intermediaries are NGOs and foreign agencies, which means that local authorities and beneficiaries have no control over these funds, even though they are best placed to know how to use them. Furthermore, he recognizes, with many regions of the country having no access to clean water, electricity or medical care, these microsubsidies are not enough to prevent populations from emigrating. “In the medium and long term, these investments do not make sense”judge Abdoul Aziz Tandia.

Another example: now aged 30, Omar Diaw spent at least five years of his life trying to reach Europe. Crossing the merciless deserts of Mali and Niger, he reached Algeria. There, upon his arrival, he was immediately deported to Niger, where there is no reception service. He then remained stuck for weeks in the desert. Ultimately, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) flew him back to Senegal, calling his return a ” voluntary “.

When he returned home to Tambacounda, the IOM enrolled him in digital marketing training which was to last several weeks and come with a stipend of 30,000 CFA francs (46 euros). But he never received the allowance and the training he followed is almost useless in his situation: in Tambacounda, the demand for digital marketing is not there. Result: he started putting money aside to try again to reach Europe.