Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/846769
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 JULY 2017 15 Interview There can be no 'irregular migration' without an organised network of human smuggling rings at every stage, from the country of origin to the final destination. Former journalist MARK MICALLEF has spent the last three years researching human smuggling networks in North Africa. He calls for an approach that combines both security and developmental goals But would that really end human smuggling, though? Wouldn't the networks just be taken over by 'real' organised criminal gangs instead? That risk is always present. Which is why a second level of in- vestment needs to be made. One of the biggest problems– which is improving, but only very slightly – is that much of the international community has very poor visibility on Libya. It only has a very basic understanding of the country. So even on the level of intervention, the first really foundational thing that needs to be done is invest- ment in a granular understanding of how things work at a local level. This idea that Libya is 'total an- archy', for example, is completely mistaken. Libya is locally governed – micro-governed, if anything – but it is not ungoverned. Different areas are governed by different po- litical eco-systems. Once you un- derstand those systems, you start to see opportunities where you can intervene. Since the revolution, I have trav- elled widely in Libya. I had been there before, too; but I hadn't seen a fraction of the country; and in those days, one was chaperoned around the place. Since the revo- lution, however I have seen much more of Libya... and I've been able to do that because I invested in understanding local political eco-systems, that would then of- fer protection, passage and ease of navigation. That same principle needs to be applied in understand- ing how one can engage. One last thing, which I think is very im- portant: in the tool-kit of what we need to be implementing, I think there should also be a develop- mental approach... That raises another criticism of EU policy: it tends to be too short- term, dealing only with individual crises as they arise. Shouldn't we also be talking about improving the economic conditions in the countries of origin? Which would presumably include Libya, too? I think we need both short- and long-term approaches. There is a very long-term developmental ap- proach to be taken with regard to investing in communities where people are departing from, in order to help with opportunity- building. This is VERY long-term: often, rather than purely economic investment, we are talking about building up the entire infrastruc- ture. But there is also a medium- to-short-term developmental out- look which needs to be considered. To give one example: until Au- gust 2015, human smuggling in Ni- ger wasn't even illegal. And Niger is a huge regional funnel feeding into Libya, and to a lesser extent Algeria. Places like Agadez, which sits around 250km from the Lib- yan border, have flourished over the past 15/20 years. And that is in part due to what we, from our per- spective, call 'human smuggling'. But it wasn't a crime. Many of the migrants flowing through Agadez come from the ECOWAS region: an area of freedom of movement, free trade, etc. They were doing absolutely nothing wrong by be- ing in northern Niger. And Nige- rien law said nothing about 'help- ing people to cross borders' being illegal. But since October the gov- ernment has been cracking down on places like Agadez: which has gone from 'full business' mode to an almost complete depression. We don't understand exactly what's happening there: but pre- liminary research suggests there has probably been a scattering ef- fect. People are still crossing, but through different routes. The problem is that we are talk- ing about a very unstable region anyway, that has been further destabilised because of the Lib- yan revolution. Mali, right next door, has suffered a war because of what happened in Libya; Boko Haram, further south, is also destabilising the region from a security perspective. And there's constant trouble in northern Chad, albeit at low level. The worry of suddenly taking out of the equation a steady source of income for thousands of young Nigeriens – who do not have any economic opportunities, other than human smuggling – is that we might be trading one problem for a bigger one. Radicalisation, which is also a major concern for all countries. That's where you need a framework of develop- ment investment which is medi- um- to short-term. Northern Ni- ger is one of the poorest regions in the world: its problems cannot be solved from one day to the next. But we're going to have to compensate somewhere for the depletion of what was, until very recently, a legitimate economy. to human smuggling It cannot be stopped; if anything we have to prepare ourselves, because in the next decade or so, the likelihood is that irregular migration is going to increase, not decrease MIGRATION