Illegal Migrant Conference Announced

Aware of international pressure to stop the flow of illegal migrants to Europe, Morocco has acted by announcing that a conference will be held next year between the European Union and Africa. The announcement was made by Moroccan junior Foreign Minister Taib Fassi Fihri. The aim of the conference is to unite efforts to combat the migrant problem.

The Moroccan government has been criticised in recent days by human rights groups at home and abroad for alleged widespread abuses of the rights of migrants when it deported about 5,000 sub-Saharan migrants to their home countries. The deportations followed the deaths of 11 illegal migrants, most of them shot dead by Spanish and Moroccan troops stopping hundreds of migrants storming the North African Spanish enclaves of Sebta and Mellila and attempting to reach European soil.

"We expect the EU-Africa conference on migration to take place in the spring or the summer of 2006," Taib Fassi Fihri told the news conference. "We say that Morocco's effort alone on the migration issue is not enough, the EU's effort alone is not enough and the efforts by each African state alone will not be enough".

French junior minister in charge of European affairs Catherine Colonna and her Spanish counterpart Alberto Navarro also attended the news conference and said that more cooperation was needed between EU and Africa to stem illegal migration flow.

"Co-development and answers to the specific needs of African states is the required strategy against illegal migration," said Colonna, calling Morocco "the country which made the most progress in its links with the EU".

According to reports in the Moroccan press, some 15,000 illegal sub-Saharan migrants were in Morocco, waiting to try to reach Europe via Spain. Meanwhile, some 200 academics, government officials and migrant rights activists met in Rabat on Monday for a two-day conference to discuss "migration and religious realities in a globalised era".

Syria's Minister for Expatriates Bouthaina Shaaban blamed the West for uneasy relations between Muslim immigrants and their host countries.

"The West is not used to religious diversity and the result is the isolation of Muslim immigrants and the lack of their interaction with the societies they live in," she told the conference.


Tags: Morocco, Spain, Migrants, Islam