In the first month of 2020 alone, 23 boats carrying 708 people landed in the Canary Islands.
Rabat – Morocco has witnessed continued success in curbing attempted irregular migration operations bound for Spain, which has long been a popular route from Africa to the EU.
This crackdown is causing undocumented migrants passing through Morocco to seek new routes, specifically traversing the choppy Atlantic towards the Canary Islands.
Morocco serves both as a transit and a destination country for migrants. The government has strengthened its approach to fight irregular migration and human trafficking for years.
Morocco is a key partner of the EU in its efforts to reduce irregular migration and human trafficking through Mediterranean. The Moroccan-Spanish bilateral cooperation has fortified their efforts to hault irregular immigration and illegal human trafficking operations.
Portugal has concerns they may be the next country migrants seek, as Morocco and Spain crack down on known irregular migration routes. Portugal and Morocco have pledged to join efforts to curb irregular migration, Portugal News reported earlier this week.
In its statement, Portugal’s Ministry of Internal Affairs also highlighted Morocco’s critical importance to the EU on a wide range of sensitive issues, including migration and security.
In 2019, Morocco aborted over 74,000 irregular migration attempts, the majority headed to Spain.
According to the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) 2019 annual report on crimes, operations against irregular migration resulted in the arrest of 27,317 would-be migrants, including 20,141 of foreign nationality.
The Canary Islands and 20 years of undocumented migrants
Spain and Portugal are just two of the EU countries that have struck agreements with Turkey, Libya, and Morocco to control the borders in the Mediterranean and decrease irregular migration. These initiatives have closed off commonly-known routes for those seeking to pass unlawfully through North Africa into the EU.
As a result, the Canaries, a volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 100 kilometers from the coast of Morocco , have once again become a gateway of choice for irregular migration routes to Spain.
This kind of migration traffic has not been seen on the Atlantic coast since 2006 to 2008, when the Canary Islands were the chosen destination for undocumented migrants. In 2006, the Canary Islands recorded 31,678 undocumented migrants’ arrivals.
Two decades of turmoil
The first documented wreck of a boat carrying undocumented migrants to the Spanish Canary Islands occurred July 26, 1999. The boat sank just 300 meters from the coast of Las Palmas, claiming the lives of at least nine people.
Since that first tragedy, more than 2,000 people have died or gone missing en route to the Canary Islands, according to estimates by the Missing Migrants Project.
In 2019, at least 54 people lost their lives attempting to reach the Canary Islands from Africa’s Atlantic coast.
On June 23, a shipwreck occurred off the coast of Dakhla, in southern Morocco. Rescue teams pulled the bodies of only four victims from the water. Authorities estimated 25 people died in total.
In a similar story, six Moroccans died on June 27 after attempting to reach the Canary Islands from Sidi Ifni. The deceased included two women and one young infant.
Moroccan Taekwondo athlete, Anouar Boukharsa, famously set sail from Morocco’s Atlantic coast not far from his home region of Safi in hopes of a successful irregular migration attempt to Spain in October 2019.
A viral social media post showed Boukharsa throwing one of his medals overboard. His group spent four days at sea before finally reaching Lanzarote, on October 23.
Moroccans represented 26% of those arrested trying to migrate without proper documents in 2019.
In recent weeks, authorities in Morocco have busted multiple irregular migration operation attempts to Spain along the Atlantic coast.
On August 17 authorities in El Jadida, near Casablanca, arrested three suspects for their alleged links with a criminal network active in the organization of irregular migration and human trafficking. Police thwarted a similar operation in Tan Tan August 12.
Rising death tolls
In recent years, arrivals on the Spanish Mediterranean coast have decreased by 50%. However, in the Canary Islands, undocumented migrants’ arrivals have multiplied by six, according to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, to reach 3,446 arrivals between January and mid-August of 2020.
In the first month of 2020 alone, 23 boats carrying 708 people landed in the Canary Islands.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded at least 239 deaths on the route so far this year. That number exceeds the 210 deaths recorded throughout all of 2019. It is well above the 43 deaths recorded in 2018 along the same route.
According to the IOM, though the Atlantic route from Morocco to Spain sees ten times less irregular migration traffic, the death toll is equivalent to half of the deaths or disappearances recorded in the Mediterranean.
The majority of migrants flee the Sahel and West Africa. However, some come travel even further, coming from South Sudan or the Comoros archipelago in the Indian Ocean, according to Txema Santana of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance (CEAR) in the Canaries.
For these refugees, the COVID-19 crisis does not deter their efforts. Rather, it adds to their struggles. Once arriving in the Canary Islands, the undocumented migrants must undergo a PCR test.
If even one of the passengers is positive, the entire group of passengers must isolate themselves in reception centers that are not designed for quarantines.
Santana has called for Spain to accelerate the transfer process from the archipelago to the mainland. She is concerned about the saturation of undocumented migrants in the Canary Islands reception centers in months to come.
She expects an increase in irregular migration traffic from Morocco to Spain’s islands in September when the wind is more favorable and the sea calmer.
