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Christo Christodoulides, Head of Office, International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Sierra Leone, has disclosed to newsmen that Sierra Leone is no exception to the trend of irregular migration and that IOM estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 young people were leaving the country irregularly every year.
The IOM head of Office was speaking during the media speed date event organized by the Migrants as Messengers (MaM) an IOM implemented project through a peer-to-peer awareness-raising campaign that empowers young people in West Africa to make informed migration decisions.
The event was held on September 9, at the Bintumani Conference Hall, Aberdeen in Freetown. The IOM boss said for some of the migrants being stranded in a foreign country the option of voluntary return facilitated by IOM can be an option.
“We have provided support to 7761 Sierra Leoneans since 2017, out of which 1474 in 2022,” he said. He said among those 7761 individuals were protection cases for 93 minors, 241 victims of trafficking, and 41 persons facing serious health conditions.
He said when it comes to figures, IOM has assisted nearly 50,000 migrants to voluntarily return to their countries of origin in 2021.
He intimated that global migration, which had decreased by approximately 27 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, has begun to rebound to pre-pandemic levels. He said IOM-the UN Migration Agency believes that safe and orderly migration is beneficial to individuals and communities, which is consistent with the theme of the event, “Impactful awareness raising for the benefit of young people and communities”.
Christodoulides said a generation of migrants was on the move in West Africa, in the hope of finding a better life for themselves, and their families back home, maintaining that based on figures by IOM’s flow monitoring, in 2021, an estimated 146,043 irregular migrants arrived in Europe, the majority over 112,747 by sea and 33,296 by land.
“A key route is the so-called Western Mediterranean (through Morocco and Algeria), for which Libya is an important transit country with an estimated number of 610,000 migrants in the same year. While most migration in West Africa is intraregional, an increasing number of sophisticated smuggling and trafficking networks lure young people into undertaking the dangerous journey northwards and but also to the Middle East,” he said. IOM assisted 49,795 migrants to return to their countries of origin, representing an increase of 18 percent from the previous year.
He said IOM was doing its best to meet an increasing demand by migrants for safe and dignified returns as well as to support their reintegration into the countries of origin following the lifting of many travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic.
“For your information, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania remain the top three African countries of return to Sierra Leone in the past years, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Oman for the Middle East, and Germany for Europe.
The business of smuggling people has been going on for generations. However, recently expanded access to mobile technology and messaging apps is making it significantly easier for smugglers to connect with and capture the attention and imagination of unemployed or underemployed youth in West Africa,” he said.
He said migrants traveling along the Central Mediterranean route are vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation and that they might face inhumane detention practices and even risk death. He assured the audience that IOM country a mission was regularly approached by migrants, eager to tell their stories in the hope of protecting their “brothers and sisters” from the same risks they were faced with.
He informed the gathering that in 2021, The IOM boss said having experienced the irregular route personally; they were best positioned to describe the reality of irregular migration, adding that a growing body of research suggests that potential migrants are generally distrustful of information campaigns on irregular migration and that they are more likely to believe the information obtained through trusted sources.
The project, Migrants as Messengers (MaM), addresses that distrust by encouraging youth in migration-prone communities in West Africa, including Sierra Leone, to adopt new attitudes and behaviors on migration through peer-to-peer messaging. e “In conclusion, it is important to build on the processes that we together with our partners, have set in motion.
Finding durable solutions to minimize the risks of irregular migration all of us to work in tandem, mobilize resources, and improve on what has already been done. On behalf of the International Organization for Migration, I want to thank the Government of Sierra Leone for their unwavering support to this project and other interventions being put in place by our Mission”.
