Where Anti-Trafficking Laws Are Reducing Migration

The Sahara, photo by Luca Galuzzi

Isn’t that a wonderfully click-baity header? Where, pray tell, are anti-trafficking laws having a major impact? It’s not the United States. It’s in Niger.

As the BBC reports, Niger has been criminally prosecuting people smugglers since 2015. The crime is punished by a hefty jail sentence and confiscation of the vehicle used for smuggling.

Prior to the enactment of this law, which was passed under European pressure, people smuggling was entirely legal. And just one region of Niger, the Agadez Region (bordering the Sahara), hosted some 6,000 smugglers. It was profitable work, earning smugglers upwards of $6,000 a week to shepherd migrants across the Sahara to the Libyan border.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed by this route. Now migration is a “relative trickle” and a far more dangerous undertaking.

The entire article is worth reading. The BBC details the horrors facing migrants both in crossing the dessert (near death, violence) and in Libya itself (slavery, extortion).

-KitJ