Death of migrants in the Sahara desert

Mediterranean to Italy on an old boat. Garrone built the story around the testimonies of several migrants, including Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou (originally from the Ivory Coast, now an activist living in Caserta, Italy). The film does not shy away from the harsh beauty of the Sahara, which claims victims among migrants who are not yet considered as such by Europe. The film focuses on the journey to Europe, even though most Africans migrate within the continent (21 million Africans live in countries where they were not born).
I Captain ends with a helicopter flying over the ship as it approaches the Italian coast. It has already been pointed out that the film does not acknowledge the racist policies that will greet Seydou and Moussa. What is not shown in the film is how European countries tried to build a fortress in the Sahel region to prevent migration north.
An open tomb More and more migrants have sought the Niger-Libya route since the fall of the Libyan state in 2011 and the crackdown on the Moroccan-Spanish border in Melilla and Ceuta. A decade ago, European states turned their attention to this route, seeking to build a European “wall” in the Sahara against migrants. The aim was to stop the migrants before they reached the Mediterranean Sea, where they would become an embarrassment to Europe. France, at the forefront, brought together five Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) in 2014 to create the G5 Sahel. In 2015, under French pressure, the government of Niger approved law 2015-36 criminalizing migration through the country. The G5 Sahel and the law in Niger came together with European Union funding to provide surveillance technologies – illegal in Europe – to be used in this band of countries against migrants. In 2016, the United States built the world's largest drone base in Agadez, Niger, as part of this anti-migrant program. In May 2023, Border Forensics studied the paths of migrants and found that due to the law in Niger and these other mechanisms the Sahara had become an “open grave”. In recent years, however, all this has begun to crumble. Coups in Guinea (2021), Mali (2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023) led to the dismantling of the G5 Sahel and calls for the removal of French and US troops. In November 2023, the government of Niger revoked law 2015-36 and released those accused of being smugglers. Abdourahamane, a local grandee, stood next to the Grand Mosque of Agadez and spoke about migrants. “The people who come here are our brothers and sisters,” he said. "They come. They're having a break. They leave. They don't bring us problems." The mosque, built of clay, carries with it the signs of the desert, but is not transitory. Abdourahamane told me it dates back to the 16th century, long before the birth of modern Europe. Many of the migrants come here to be blessed before buying sunglasses and crossing the desert, hoping to overcome the sands and find their destiny somewhere beyond the horizon.