Minister Blok: Niger and the Netherlands are "neighbors"

He is busy in Niger. Until recently, migrants, particularly from neighboring Nigeria, traveled to Europe. Now European diplomats come and go and want to help the country reverse this trend.

Wednesday, Minister Stef Blok (Foreign Affairs) was in Niamey for the opening of an office at the Embassy. Belgians and Italians have also landed here recently. And the United States is developing not only diplomatically, with a new complex that can accommodate a hundred people at a time, but also building a base of drones in the desert for the "war on terror ".

Why suddenly this interest? "Because we are neighbors," Blok says in good French to the diplomats present at the opening ceremony. "The challenges of Niger are those of the Netherlands and the EU." The minister announces that the Netherlands will invest 4 million euros over the next three years in a new border team of 250 Nigerians, as a result of a group formed by the Americans. border guards. Germany provides the necessary 6 million euros.

Niger, the new external border of the EU: it was unimaginable five years ago. The poorest country in the world was not on the radar. Due to the migration crisis of 2015, this has changed. Europe's external borders have proved weak. The flight into Libya torn apart by the militia can not. Tunisia prefers not to play a camp for the EU. So we are turning more south, to Niger, according to a number of diplomats "our new best friend".

Under pressure from the European Union, Niger re-emerged. It worked. In 2015, six to seven thousand people a week traveled across the Niger to Libya. In the meantime, it's a thousand. The current is even reversed, because the international organization of migration, the IOM, succeeds more and more to bring back stranded migrants in Libya.

Blok's colleague, Kalla Ankourao, does not fear that this interest will disappear because of the urgency of the migratory crisis. Europe is less felt. "We are certain that the countries will stay, everyone is committed," said the minister after giving Blok two brilliant figures, a camel giraffe. Blok calls the embassy office "a first step". In time, it could even become an embassy.

But it is not only the European Union that has discovered Niger. Algeria has that too. Since then, migrants have been expelled from this country in an uncontrollable manner and in violation of all international treaties, sometimes with brutal force – this would already involve 7,000 people. Martin Wyss, Regional Manager of IOM, said: "There is strong resistance in return.

6,000 unemployed smugglers

In addition to Niger, Blok also joins Nigeria and Tunisia this week , with a stopover in the desert city of Agadez, the irregular migration hub.The discontent is great because locals have lost a major source of income now that human trafficking has been declared illegal. The EU has launched a program of financing alternative business ideas, but only 400 were selected from 6,500 applications.

Regional Council, versus Blok. "The feeling is this: a promise has been made made and this promise was broken, "said Wyss of IOM Vincent van Zeijst, the Dutch agent in Niger, nuance.Of course, he says, help is needed, but the extreme boom income caused by human trafficking in Agadez in 2015 can hardly be used as a "zero line".

The pressure to act is great: in Niger itself, this may be reasonable calm, the country is surrounded by extremist violence, by jihadists in Mali, ISIS fighters in Libya and the group Islamic terrorist Boko Haram. With six thousand former smugglers unemployed in Agadez center. This poses problems, says a Belgian diplomat. "Niger is a jewel of stability on which we must be very economical."

On the IOM site in Agadez, Blok listens to the horror stories of migrants taken in the desert. Since the stricter contraband laws, much greater risk has been taken to bypass patrols. If things go wrong, the migrants will be expelled from the jeep without any grace. This is a lot about Algeria. A stuck migrant says the practices in this country are good for Europe. "EU countries have encouraged Algeria to do it," he told Blok. This certainly challenges him. "Every country has the right to act if people are illegally in the territory," he said. "It must always be human, tying an eye is not acceptable."