LIBREVILLE, March 17, 2023 (AGP) – Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Thursday denounced the “abandonment” of thousands of migrants expelled by Algeria present in Assamaka, a city in the Agadez region in northern Niger, according to a dispatch from AFP sent to the editorial office of the AGP.
“Thousands of migrants expelled from Algeria and abandoned in the desert (in the north) of Niger are stranded, without access to shelter, health care, protection and basic necessities”, affirms the NGO in a press release. It is “an unprecedented situation” according to her.
“Between January 11 and March 3, 2023, 4,677 people in a situation of migration arrived on foot in Assamaka”, specifies MSF, which adds that “less than 15% of them were able to benefit from shelter or protection upon arrival. The Integrated Health Center (CSI) in Assamaka, in which MSF “distributes non-food items” and offers “free consultations” for health, is “overwhelmed”. “The majority of people who recently arrived in Assamaka settled in the compound of the CSI, due to the lack of space in the transit center,” said an MSF coordinator in Agadez, Schemssa Kimana, quoted in the press release.
MSF adds that people are “seeking shelter from the heat” which can “reach 48°C” in Assamaka, even sleeping in “makeshift tents”, “in front of the maternity ward, on the roof or in the area of waste”. In “unhygienic” places, these people are exposed “to health risks such as contagious diseases and skin infections,” says MSF.
The head of the MSF mission in Niger, Jamal Mrrouch, denounces a situation “which requires an emergency humanitarian response from ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), from which the majority of these people. In June 2022, MSF estimated that more than 14,000 people had suffered the same fate since the beginning of the year 15 km from Assamaka, and 27,208 in 2021.
AK/FSS
