Fragile States and Resilient Criminal Ecosystems: Human Smuggling and Trafficking Trends in North Africa and the Sahel

By Mark Micallet and Matt Herbert

Irregular migration and human smuggling through the Sahel and North Africa are often assessed and framed through the metric of arrivals in Europe by migrants on boats. According to that metric, 2021 was an important year. On the three major routes connecting Africa to Europe – through the Central Mediterranean, the Western Mediterranean and via north-west Africa – 108 541 migrants arrived in Europe that year. This was the highest number witnessed since 2017, when there was a dramatic collapse in arrival numbers following the rapid growth seen between 2013 and 2017.1 Data for the number of migrants intercepted prior to arriving in European waters is not as comprehensive, but likely to be high, with Tunisia and Libya alone recording 54 512 disembarkations in 2021, the highest levels ever recorded by both countries.2 However, focusing only on the metric of disembarkations of migrants in Europe is problematic. Assessed alone, these figures skew the perspective of what is a highly complex situation. Disembarkation levels, while measuring success or failure of a migrant’s journey, otherwise speak to little, if anything, of how the human smuggling ecosystem in North Africa and the Sahel is changing. Moreover, these statistics obscure the significance of dynamics and shifts in zones of both embarkation and transit, which are

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 46p.