Headline August 29, 2017/ ''' STUDENTS....[DYING].... *SAHARA* '''

''' STUDENTS....[DYING].... 

*SAHARA* '''

''MERCY MY LORD!''  MERCY PLEASE!* .....   -the World Students Society, Just can't believe this kind of governance and sufferings happening in the 21st century

Niger's  E.U. funded crackdown on smuggling is.......pushing desperate students/people to even more hazardous desert routes. Few make it through. They perish in utter agony and screaming deaths.

''There are more being abandoned now,'' said Taher Lawal, who works with Nigerian Red Cross in the northern oasis town of Bilima, which is also the migration route.

''This year there have been so many deaths :  40 student/migrants, including three babies and two other children, died in May when their vehicle broke down in the desert.''

The only reason the story got out was because six survivors walked for days to a village where they were rescued. The following month at least 50 perished after they were abandoned.

A VERY MAJOR, MAJOR INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY is unfolding in Northern Africa, and the World has yet to notice.

Smugglers are abandoning hundreds of students/migrants as they attempt to cross the unforgiving sands and heat of Sahara. In an efforts to to evade new patrols by the Nigerian military, the human traffickers are leaving their charges to die of thirst and isolation.

The European Union and the United Nations blame the smugglers for broadening  ''the death trap from the  Mediterranean to the  Sahara Desert''.

But the dangers of the Saharan route  have been exacerbated by the European Union's own policy, which has pushed the hazards of irregular migration further into the desert and out sight of the media and global attention.

After the  European Union's  efforts to stem the tide of migrants crossing the Mediterranean proved more complicated to accomplish than expected and failed to stop boat arrivals, it has expanded its partnership with  Niger and focused its attention on the desert routes used by smugglers.

With  Niger's 2015 law against smuggling as legal pretext, the union has provided  financial and logistical  support to the  sub-Saharan country, which has used its military and the police to crack down on West African migrants crossing from northern Niger into Libya and Algeria.

Since 2016, Niger has arrested more than 100 human traffickers and confiscated more than  95 vehicles,. At the same time, it has intercepted more than 2,000 migrants at the Niger-Libya border and sent them back to their home countries.

The number of migrants observed by the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency, crossing from Niger into Libya via established routes through the northern Niger town of  Seguedine has been sharply reduced since September 2016 when the new measures came into effect.

''Our cooperation has reach an unprecedented level,'' wrote a European Union spokesperson, who declined to be named, via email. ''In only one year, we are seeing good results.''

But the crackdown has not stopped migrants from making the trip. Instead, it  ''has had the practical effect people carrying out this quasi-legal activity further in the shadows,'' said Peter Tinti, a senior research fellow with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a watchdog group.

''It's a know fact that the routes are changing and becoming more dangerous, which exposes  students/migrants   to more risks,'' said Monica Chiriac, a spokeswoman for the  International Organization for Migration in Niger, also via email.

Her agency estimates that up to 6,000 people a month are travelling along a more dangerous route, which cuts to the coast across the border with neighboring Chad.

When smugglers believe there are police or military in the area, or if they have technical problems because of the greater hazards of the desert tracks, they have taken to-

Kicking the migrants out of their vehicles and leaving them to fend for themselves. without food, shelter or water, aid workers report.

Already this year, the local government and the United Nations agency have rescued at least 1,000 migrants who were left stranded by traffickers.

But the agency counts only people it finds alive; the number of those who died of thirst in temperatures that can reach over  110 degrees is unknown, but likely exceeds the number of those rescued.

Aid workers say this is the  most dangerous year and times yet, for these students/migrants..

The number of  students/people found abandoned, dead or alive, in the Sahara exposes the fact that the European Union and Niger are NOT living up to their commitments-

To uphold human rights of migrants/students and to protect them from utter suffering and abuse and horrid end. 

*The alternative is stark : ''If this situation continues, the number of deaths in the desert will be equal to that in the sea,''* said Mr. Lawal of the Red Cross.

Merely displacing the problem out of the sight of the world's media is no solution to North Africa's students/migration crisis.

With respectful dedication and many thanks to Joe Penney for the research then to the Leaders of North Africa, Students, Professors and Teachers. 

See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and   Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Shame Under Siege  '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless