To talk of a single migrant crisis in Europe can be misleading. The eastern routes carrying migrants over the Mediterranean Sea have commanded international attention for the sheer number of Syrian refugees who have traversed them to enter Europe, and for the European Union's negotiations and subsequent migrant deal with Turkey that the crisis prompted. Despite their higher profile and amount of traffic, however, the eastern routes are not the only migrant paths into Europe across the Mediterranean, nor is Syria the only country from which migrants are fleeing. Thousands of migrants also reach Europe each year from North Africa — Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt — by way of routes crossing the central and western Mediterranean.
Though these paths are less traveled than the eastern routes, they are no less treacherous. Most deaths among migrants who headed across the Mediterranean this year occurred along the central route. To address the problem, the European Union is trying to negotiate agreements with the countries from which the migrants travel, much as it did with Turkey earlier this year. But the arrangements will only be as effective in constricting migrant flows as are the governments of the North African countries from which they depart.
Migrants who cross the central Mediterranean are usually traveling the last leg of a much longer journey. Most people who embark from North Africa have migrated there, driven by poverty, repression or a lack of opportunity in their home countries. Nine sub-Saharan nations — Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Somalia, Mali and Senegal — contribute the vast majority of the human traffic along the routes. Border guards who are easy to bribe and borders that are difficult to secure conspire to enable migrants to make the arduous and expensive trek north to the coast.
Truly stemming the tide of migrants along the central routes, then, is more a matter of keeping people from heading into North Africa than of stopping them from leaving there. To alleviate some of the economic desperation driving migrants north, Europe set up the $1.8 billion Emergency Trust Fund for Africa in late 2015 to pay for projects including education development and employment support in 23 African countries that typically feed the migrant flow. But the negotiations and development work that the money will pay for could take decades to actually reduce emigration from sub-Saharan Africa, if the targeted governments even accept the aid in the first place. In the meantime, the European Union will look for willing partners in North Africa with which to forge migrant deals. The more robust the laws for the resettlement and processing of migrants in a given country, the more likely an agreement between that country and the European Union is to succeed. Still, it will be a tall order for the five North African countries.
