While Europe aims to outsource border management, bribing the states located along its southern and eastern gates, the Mediterranean is being transformed into a graveyard. Migrants are stripped of their humanity and reduced to grim figures. A group of journalists from independent media outlets across the Arab World have published a series of articles exposing the exorbitant price paid by the populations concerned, through no fault of their own.

The Mediterranean is turning into a mass grave. On March 14, 2024, a boat sank off the southwestern coast of Tunisia, resulting in 36 people dead or missing. The day before, 60 migrants had already disappeared off the coast of Libya. On March 15, another 22 drowned near Turkey. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 3105 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2023, which is the highest number recorded since 2017.

That same week, on March 17, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, led a delegation to Cairo to sign a 7.4 billion euro partnership agreement with Egypt, encompassing a migration component¹. The aim is straightforward: to externalize Europe's borders by supporting an authoritarian regime in order to "manage" population flows, be they from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East or even Egypt itself. At a time when the silence and inaction of European institutions is glaring in the face of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip (the European Union is Israel's main trading partner, and many member states, including France, continue to supply them with arms), has European diplomacy been reduced to merely controlling the externalization of borders? Is this th e international ambition of the 27 member states? 

"Border management" is tantamount to stripping migrants of their humanity. Their identity, their lives, and their journeys are reduced to macabre statistics. This is how the equation is framed: since the problem is a numerical one, it needs to be "solved" by even larger figures disbursed for its so-called management. But why do people migrate? While the reasons do vary (persecution, work, study, family, etc.), the public debate primarily focuses on the binary opposition between political refugees and economic migrants, as if the former were more legitimate than the latter, as if the "persecution" defined by the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was not open to interpretation and, above all, perceived differently. 

In this age of globalized digital technologies, worldwide hyperconnection and instantaneous dissemination of information, inequalities and injustices can easily and immediately be identified. As Nathalie Galesne explains in her Babelmed article "Tunisia, a country under lock and key?": carrying a "red passport", as they say in Tunisian, to be able to cross borders, contrasts heavily with the reality of Tunisians, who are increasingly denied the right to leave. This gives rise to a new compulsion, a quasi-irrepressible desire to leave, fuelled by the difficulties of everyday life and the impact of colonization on the subconscious, combined with the overwhelmingly idealized image of the West. 

Shortages, socio-spatial segregation, police violence, lack of prospects: how can we fail to correlate the desire to leave with the rise in unemployment², inflation and political disillusionment taking place more than 10 years after the revolution, as additionally exemplified by the drastic fall in birth rate?³ 

As Marine Caleb points out in her eponymous article for Orient XXI, "one man's misfortune is another man's gain". The massive departure of qualified young people, educated in Tunisia, benefits the economies of the North, despite complex regularization procedures. We can only deplore the lack of coordinated efforts to promote more circular development between the two shores of the Mediterranean. 

On the opposite side, Europe is oscillating between militarizing its borders and outsourcing its migration policy. As Federica Araco notes in her Babelmed article "The shadow cast by the European fortress," "since 2014, the European border control agency Frontex has carried out several military operations to monitor and limit migratory flows (Triton, Sophia, Themis, Irini) that have made the borders of this immense liquid continent increasingly dangerous for those who try to cross them". This includes the use of Heron drones developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, whose weaponry is currently being used en masse against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Another aspect is the outsourcing of external border management. Under the Dublin asylum system, there is no European solidarity, and migratory flows are concentrated exclusively in Mediterranean countries. On the other hand, all European states are united in their desire to externalize their borders, and for them to be controlled and reinforced directly by the states situated to the south and east of the Mediterranean. Following in the footsteps of Turkey, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, it is now Egypt's turn to benefit from European funding aimed at preventing migrants from setting sail. This de facto legitimizes a number of authoritarian regimes that pay little or no regard to repeated human rights violations. 

As a result, nearly 30,000 migrants have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean over the past decade. 

The Babelmed article "Dans l'enfer des derniers disparus" ["Inside the hell of the latest disappearances"] by Federica Araco takes a closer look at the consequences of tighter migration policies, whether along the three main Mediterranean sea routes (Central, Western, Eastern) or overland, with barbed-wire structures being built along the borders. Far from curbing migration, these measures are actually simply making the process more dangerous. Even worse: they are accompanied by a deterioration in the conditions they are met with upon reception on European soil. The blatant case of Italy, described by Federica, illustrates the increased vulnerability of migrants, between undeclared work and criminal networks. 

At the border between Algeria and Morocco, the reinforcement of the surveillance system by border security guards and control towers has resulted in a shift in migratory flows. As discussed by S.B and B.K in their article "The effects of migratory tragedies on the militarized Algerian-Moroccan border, from prisons to risking death" for Maghreb Emergent and Radio M, the evacuation of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants from Oued Georgi on the border has prompted people to opt for other clandestine migration routes. The insecurity at the border was already prompting sub-Saharan Africans and Algerians to head eastwards, especially towards Tunisia and Libya. The same is true of Moroccans, who are generally more drawn to Algeria due to lower costs and more secure crossings. 

All these developments do nothing to improve the living conditions of migrants in transit countries, particularly in Tunisia. In his Naweet article titled "Tunisia Faces Influx Of Sudanese Immigrants: Report In Lac 1," Rihab Boukhayatia details the miserable living conditions in the camps set up next to the IOM offices in the heart of the capital. "Overwhelmed as it is by the influx of new cases, the HCR cannot meet the demands of refugees without the support of Tunisian authorities. Tunisia's legal procedures make it difficult for asylum seekers and refugees to find work, housing or access to education for all their children. What's more, despite being a member of the Geneva Convention, Tunisia has not yet adopted a national asylum system, notes the UNHCR." 40% of the 13,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with the UNHCR in Tunisia come from Sudan, which has been in the midst of internal conflict for the past year.

Outside Sfax, migrants of different nationalities (Guinean, Burkinabe, Malian, Ivorian, Cameroonian) live and work in the olive groves under inhumane conditions. The Nawaat report "Under the shade of the olive trees of El-Amra, relentless crimes against migrants" by Najla Ben Salah, exposes the plight of over 6,000 sub-Saharan migrants forced to take refuge in the olive groves near the city, following the racist declarations of Tunisian President Kais Saied, and the consequent mass expulsion campaigns. Subject to police violence, sexual abuse, arbitrary arrests and confiscation of their property, some are deported to Algeria and Libya without any legal guarantees. And as always, women are the primary victims. 

As noted by Nathalie Galesne in the article "Damned in the desert, damned in the sea" on Babelmed, even if civil society, and feminists in particular, are rallying, the situation remains very tense on the ground. This is true for all migrants, including students, as Jean, president of an African student association in Tunisia, confirms. "Since the beginning of the year, students have once again been arbitrarily arrested⁴, even though they have their papers in order. The justice system plays its part and they are generally released, but they may be incarcerated beforehand, and their legal fees are not reimbursed." The various associations and embassies of the countries concerned are trying to organize themselves collectively to put more pressure on the Tunisian authorities, but the results have been disappointing. In this difficult context, it is above all the solidarity between individual migrants (illustrated well in the film My Captain [Io Capitano] by Matteo Garrone (2024), screened in Tunis), that restores a little humanity to these individuals who are left to fend for themselves. 

Unsurprisingly, a number of polls point to a far-right breakthrough in the current elections. What can we do about it? Should we point out to Marine Le Pen, who repeatedly stresses the need for a "maritime blockade" in the Mediterranean, that such a blockade has already been in place around the Gaza Strip since 2006? How do we influence Fabrice Leggeri, number 3 on the 'Rassemblement National' list, and former director of Frontex? What about Giorgia Meloni, head of Italy's far-right government? Nothing should pit identity, however it may be defined, against the values of hospitality and, above all, respect for human integrity and fellowship. 

Five years later, the fruits of a media collaboration between various independent media outlets covering the Arab World, based both north and south of the Mediterranean, resulted in a joint report aiming to contextualize migration dynamics, deconstruct prejudices and, above all, restore a united sense of humanity in the face of this endless mass tragedy.