The EU has committed more than €141 million to tackle the underlying causes of illegal migration of nationals from the Sahel region and the Chad basin, the European Commission announced on Tuesday 20 November.
This amount, drawn from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, will finance five new programmes approved by the institution on the same day.
Two programmes aim to shore up stability in the G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger): €70 million to increase people’s access to social services and €5 million to implement the second phase of The Voices of young people in the Sahel programme to ensure young people's participation in the design and implementation of social and development policies.
The remainder is distributed as follows: - Niger: €7.6 million for migrant protection, support for refugee host communities and €10 million to support the justice, security and border management sectors; - Senegal €9 million to help tackle the criminal networks that are linked to trafficking - Côte d'Ivoire: €30 million to improve access to public services and facilitate the voluntary return and sustainable reintegration of migrants; - €12 million for the Technical Cooperation Facility for the whole region. This decision brings the total number of programmes adopted for the Sahel and Lake Chad region since December 2015 to 91 (with a total value of €1.7 billion). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)