We, civil society organisations from various networks dedicated to defending and promoting migrants’ rights in Africa, are closely monitoring the alarming humanitarian situation and widespread human rights violations occurring at Algeria’s southern border since April 2025. This situation, stemming from the Algerian authorities’ decision to severely undermine migrants’ human rights in violation of international commitments, continues to be a source of deep concern for us.
During this particularly hot month in the Saharan zone, with temperatures approaching 50°C in some areas, the Algerian government has chosen to return manu militari more than a thousand migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who are on its territory for various reasons, towards the Sahara. They are ordered to seek shelter somewhere in neighbouring Niger territory. Stripped of their belongings and often
suffering from various illnesses, these migrants are forced by the Algerian authorities into a desert that has, over time and due to the choices made by certain governments, including that of Algiers, become a silent place of death that migrants denounce without being heard.
A total of 1,141 migrants—including 107 women and 29 minors—were forcibly returned to the Sahara by Algerian authorities in a single convoy. When combined with other deportees officially documented by Nigerian civil society organisations, including Alarm Phone Sahara, the number of people expelled by Algeria to this Saharan territory rises to at least 5,800. In the current sub-regional context, the situation of these individuals remains deeply uncertain.
A major limitation of these figures is their inaccuracy, as they fail to account for the many migrants who, gripped by fear and panic during violent operations, leapt from moving trucks near border zones or on the outskirts of the cities where they were apprehended. Survivors of these heavy-handed expulsions recount physical and verbal abuse, as well as degrading treatment at the hands of authorities in this so- called “brotherly” country. Some migrants have disappeared without a trace, while others speak of lifeless bodies found along the desert route. This Saharan journey follows a now well-established pattern: migrants—including women, children, and the sick—are abandoned at Algeria’s southern border and left to make their way through the Niger Desert on foot.
The fate of these youths—wounded and treated without dignity—mirrors that of young Algerian harragas who leave their country in search of greener pastures. These young migrants are among the primary victims of economic policies imposed by institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, policies their so called “student-states” have internalised and learned to enforce. Abandoned on the shores of a so-
called “wealthy” Africa that claims to be shaping the future of humanity, they struggle to survive—not to live, but simply not to die—while waiting for a tomorrow that promises hope but increasingly feels like fiction under prevailing governance conditions. For some, Algeria is nothing more than a necessary stop on the journey toward their next uncertain destination.
Algeria has developed one of the world’s most repressive systems for dealing with young people who refuse to accept their conditions with resignation—those who struggle, resist, and sometimes pay with their lives. While President Trump is returning migrants to the notorious Guantanamo Bay, our so-called “brother” Algeria is deporting them to the Sahara. In fact, Algeria has its own version of Guantanamo—though it bears local names: yesterday it was Tinzaouaten in the Malian Sahara; today it is Assamaka in the Nigerien Sahara.
Humanitarian organisations operating in Assamaka, a remote Nigerien town some 40 kilometers from the border, are overwhelmed and unable to cope with the growing number of deportees. Aid workers say the current situation recalls similarly dire conditions faced by migrants in Niger between 2022 and 2023. For context, Algeria expelled 26,000 migrants to the Niger desert in 2023, and over 31,000 in 2024.
African states, complicit in driving young people toward perilous migration routes due to their failure to provide adequate social welfare at home, maintain a deafening and culpable silence in the face of a crisis that has persisted for decades—along Algeria’s southern border and across African migratory routes more broadly.
The African Union and sub-regional organisations such as ECOWAS and CEMAC—whose citizens number in the hundreds or thousands among the victims—remain conspicuously silent in the face of this ongoing crisis. Meanwhile, other actors, like the European Union, who are quick to denounce human rights abuses against Uyghurs in China or similar violations elsewhere, appear to view the atrocities unfolding in the Mediterranean as distant and invisible. Their silence speaks volumes—it signals a tacit approval of a subcontractor doing the “dirty work”, much like the so-called Kais Saied not far from Algiers.
In light of the above, we, the undersigned civil society organisations, hereby declare the following;
- denounce :
- these expulsions not only violate human rights protections enshrined in national, sub-regional, and international legal instruments, but are also marked by extreme violence and a blatant disregard for human dignity.
- the complicit silence of the African Union, as well as regional and sub-regional bodies.
- we call on :
- the Algerian authorities to immediately halt these unlawful and dehumanizing expulsions.
- to the African Union, and to regional and sub-regional institutions, to firmly condemn the human rights violations against migrants orchestrated by the Algerian government.
- an end to the European Union’s complicity, which has actively promoted such repressive policies through its cooperation with transit and departure states on migration.
- A humane and respectful treatment of migrants’ dignity in all actions targeting them.
Signed by :
Alarm phone Sahara
Maghreb-Sahel Migration Network (RMSM)
Southern Africa Migration Network (SAMIN)
Research and Action Group on Migration (GRAMI-AC)
Roa-Prodmac (West African Network for the Promotion of the Rights of
Migrants, Asylum Seekers, and Free Movement)