Europe, Africa seek joint effort on migrant surge

The first European Union-African Union conference on migration is intended to send a signal that the two regions can work together to deepen security cooperation on land and sea borders and narrow the wealth gap drawing Africans northwards.

Few expect headline-grabbing initiatives from the two-day meeting, and no money will be pledged.

Instead, the focus will be on identifying long-term solutions such as creating more jobs in Africa to curb its "brain drain" and widening opportunities for legal migration.

An AU statement called for lasting solutions to a phenomenon it said had worsened "tensions and passions" and featured exploitation, xenophobia, racism and discrimination.

"There will be no immediate results, no concrete set of measures that start next Monday and make a big difference," Anne Sipilainen, deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry in Finland, current holder of the EU presidency, said. "It's really a political conference to send a political message that we are here together and need to work together."

The meeting "covers all related aspects - peace and security, human rights, brain drain and development."

More than 26,000 West Africans, at least half of them Senegalese, have come ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands this year in an illegal migrant exodus dwarfing previous such flows.

Thousands more have entered Europe via Morocco or Libya after traversing the Sahara desert. Many are prey to conmen who pose as people smugglers to swindle the unwary. The exodus, which has seen hundreds of deaths from drowning or hunger as migrants set sail in fragile boats, has touched off political disputes in many European states and at times raised the diplomatic temperature between Europe and Africa.

European governments, some of them under pressure at home to toughen immigration policy, have accused African counterparts of failing to fulfil accords pledging to combat illegal migration.

Africa has urged Europe to be more open to legal migrants and argues a crackdown on migrants, without more development aid, will only push the flow to other places.

EU migration commissioner Franco Frattini said the EU would try to respond to that call. "Tripoli is a unique opportunity to address both legal and illegal migration," he said.

A July 2006 report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that at least 200,000 Africans enter Europe clandestinely every year. Another 100,000 try but are intercepted, and countless others try but lose their way or their lives, it said.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi won headlines in September when he called on Europe to pay €10 billion a year to Africa to help it stop the exodus.

Ms Sipilainen commented: "There certainly will be money available if country X underlines that they are creating capacity and addressing the root causes of migration as a priority - but it's not a (money) pledging conference."

Key facts on illegal migration from Africa

Thousands of Africans try to reach Europe's southern shores each year, crossing the sea in flimsy boats. Human rights groups say thousands have died en route.

Why do people leave?
• Africa's population is rising sharply and economic growth has not kept pace. From 221 million in 1950, there are now around 800 million Africans, 13.5 per cent of world population.

• In 2001, 46 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's people lived on less than a dollar a day. Africa faces environmental degradation, diseases like HIV/AIDS, conflict and famine. In sub-Saharan Africa, 44 per cent of the population is under 15.

Numbers
• More than 26,000 illegal migrants have flooded the Canary Islands this year, around five times the number last year. Malta and Italy face similar problems. At least 10,000 reached the Italian island of Lampedusa from January to August. Last year nearly 23,000 reached Italy, 8,000 more than in 2004.

• At least three Africans died in July when up to 70 people stormed a razor-wire fence surrounding Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the African coast. Eleven died in October 2005 scaling the fences of Melilla and sister enclave Ceuta.

• Eurostat, the EU statistics office, says the EU population rose by 2.3 million in 2004, 1.9 million of them immigrants.

• The United Nations says Europe hosted 34 per cent of all migrants last year, North America 23 per cent and Asia 28 per cent. Some nine per cent were living in Africa, three per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, and three per cent in Oceania.

What is being done?
• Spain said last month its strategy of combining reinforced sea and air patrols off the coast of West Africa with a programme to repatriate detained clandestine migrants had sharply decreased the rate of arrivals in the Canaries.

• Madrid has also pledged tens of millions of euros in aid to Senegal and other poor West African states to back development programmes designed to create jobs and persuade young people to stay in their own countries.

• The European Union's eight southern states agreed at the end of September to reinforce sea patrols, create a joint network of coastguards and develop an electronic alarm system to cover the Mediterranean and alert guards when immigrant-laden boats set off from African shores.