On October 30th the first phase of an “€80 million border management programme” was signed between the EU and Egypt during a visit to Cairo by the EU’s commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi.
The funding will assist Egypt’s border and coastguards, the Reuters news agency has reported, while providing for “the procurement of surveillance equipment such as search and rescue vessels, thermal cameras, and satellite positioning systems.”
Laurent de Boeck, head of the UN’s International Organisation for Migration’s Egypt office, said they will help implement the deal, along with CIVIPOL, a French interior ministry agency.
The agreement echoes similar ones between the EU and Turkey, Libya and Morocco, aimed at stopping refugees and migrants from reaching Europe. These deals have repeatedly been proven to trap desperate and vulnerable men, women and children in cycles of abuse and exploitation as they try to reach a safe country.
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When I heard the news I thought of the work of Irish legal academic Seán Columb, who published a book in 2020 called Trading Life: Organ Trafficking, Illicit Networks and Exploitation. It was based on his years of research into migrants and refugees in Egypt, and specifically how they can end up selling their organs, or being tricked into having them removed.
He interviewed people who were trafficked to Egypt from Sudan with promises of non-existent job offers before having their organs removed, along with others who willingly opted to sell a kidney to fund travel on towards Europe; to afford healthcare for family members; or to pay back debts that they have accumulated trying to escape the country they originally came from. Of those that do agree a price, some receive the full amount of money that was promised to them, while others are abandoned with nothing. Many previously fled war zones or dictatorships and sold their kidneys out of desperation, after becoming disillusioned with the possibility of being taken to a safe country through the UN or other legal routes, he says. In the aftermath some suffered from trauma, shame and long-term health problems, which left them unable to work.
Egypt is a police state with a dire human rights record. Yet the EU, which has condemned the Egyptian state for its mistreatment of refugees, and its own citizens, is actively funding the expansion of military controls
— Seán Columb
Organ removal, particularly when it happens without consent, is just one extreme form of exploitation that migrants and refugees can face when they are left without supports, legal pathways and other options. As Europe hardens its borders against people from impoverished or war-torn countries who cannot access legal routes to safety, exploitation and abuse of all types will intensify.
Columb writes in his book that “the relationship or pattern of economic exchange [where a migrant will sell a kidney in order to fund a journey towards Europe] developed alongside the punitive immigration controls and containment strategies established as part of the EUTF.” The EUTF is the European Union’s Trust Fund for Africa: a multibillion euro pot of money set up in 2015, which is spent across 26 African countries in an effort to stop migration.
Border controls, he writes, “exacerbate the level of abuse and exploitation that migrants, regardless of their legal status, are exposed to. In the current global political climate, criminal policy has become synonymous with migration management.”
When I spoke to him on the phone this week, Columb said he is looking into the new EU-Egypt deal. “Things are going to get worse now obviously,” he said. “Egypt is a police state with a dire human rights record. Yet the EU, which has condemned the Egyptian state for its mistreatment of refugees, and its own citizens, is actively funding the expansion of military controls. All this money is being spent to reduce irregular migration but it’s producing more demand for smuggling services and proactively denying people the right to claim asylum.
“Someone has to start questioning what on earth is happening with this money ... How are these programmes working in practice?” he said.
[ Sally Hayden: The EU is spending huge sums to block migrantsOpens in new window ]
In an email, an EU spokesman said that the respect of human rights when supporting migration management and border management is a priority for them, and full respect for human rights will be an “essential and integrated element of this action.” He said that as well as hardware, the project would involve training for the Egyptian border and coastguards that took a “human rights-based approach”.
In 2020 Amnesty International documented how Sudanese refugees and migrants protesting in Cairo over the killing of a child by an Egyptian police officer were retaliated against with tear gas and water cannons, while many were detained.
Earlier this year Human Rights Watch said at least 30 Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers had been detained in Egypt for protesting in front of the UN Refugee Agency. Some were later subjected to forced labour and beatings.
The new deal came days before the release of a BBC investigative documentary called Death on the Border, which examines what happened last June 24th on the land border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
At least 23 Africans died as Moroccan security forces shot huge amounts of tear gas and beat people lying defenceless on the ground. The investigation showed how some were crushed to death; others thrashed violently. “They would hit you to see if you were dead. If you were not dead, they would hit you more. They only walked away if they thought you were dead,” said one survivor.
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights says that more than 70 people are still missing. The Spanish Ombudsman said 470 people were pushed back across the Spanish border into Morocco without consideration of legal provisions.
Two months before the mass deaths, in April 2022, Morocco and Spain signed an agreement on border control. Two weeks after the deaths the EU renewed its own agreement with Morocco related to stopping migration. In August the EU followed this up by agreeing to pay Morocco €500 million.