When hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees started coming to Europe in 2015, the EU poured money into Niger, the key African migrant transit country. The controversial move worked. The Nigerian security forces cracked down on migration routes and overall numbers fell. As migration picks up across the Mediterranean, the same thing is happening with Tunisia. On Sunday, the EU and Tunisia signed a €1 billion package designed to stop migration, which, among other things, gives Tunisians access to the Erasmus exchange programme (something the UK lost after Brexit). Rights organisations have described the move as “morally bankrupt”. The deal came as Tunisian authorities rounded up hundreds of Black African migrants and asylum seekers, including children and pregnant women, and dumped them in a 40C desert buffer zone next to Libya with no way out.
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