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Impressions from the Agadez region from May to August 2024

10,000 people arrested in Libya for deportation, according to local sources

Between 9 and 13 May 2024, 5 people died following deportation from Algeria and 3 people, including a 3-year-old little girl, died at the Assamaka hospital ward. Alarme Phone Sahara (APS) condemns the deaths of migrants caused by deportation in violent and inhuman conditions.

Alarme Phone Sahara welcomes the Nigerien government's response to Algeria over the mass pushbacks in the desert towards Niger.

On 27 February 2024, Blessing, a 28-year-old woman of Nigerian origin, was murdered in Agadez by men who brutally raped and maltreated her. Alarme Phone Sahara is sharing the story to denounce this act of feminicide and the violent structures behind it:

From 15 to 22 December 2023, an Alarme Phone Sahara (APS) mission was held in Assamaka, the village on the Niger-Algeria border where most of the transit traffic between Algeria and Niger takes place, but where the deportation convoys with thousands of people deported from Algeria to Niger also arrive. In 2023, at least 2,631 people were deported from Algeria to Niger via Assamaka - the highest figure in recent years.

On 25 November 2023, General Abdourahamane Tiani, the President of the "Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP)", the body that has been running the government in Niger since the coup d'état on 26 July 2023, signed an order repealing the law 2015-036 on the "smuggling of migrants". All judgements handed down since the implementation of this law have been annulled with retroactive effect and all persons imprisoned based on this law have been released due to local sources from Niger. Alarme Phone Sahara (APS) and other civil society organisations from Niger welcome the abolition of this law criminalising migration.

Stranded in Niger, with no evacuation flights and no hope of help from the IOM or other institutions, Malian migrants left Arlit in northern Niger on foot on 30 October 2023.

17.10.2023: 20 migrants in distress rescued in northern Niger on the road between Dirkou and the Libyan border.

At least 5,012 people deported from Algeria to Niger from 26 July till 18 October 2023.