United Nations Radio

An increasing number of men from the Horn and East Africa are migrating to South Africa in pursuit of greener pastures.

Migrants

They often are subject to abuses and other violations on their way. Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesperson for the International Organization on Migration talks about their new report detailing this increasing phenomenon of irregular migrations to South Africa.

CHAUZY: This report is important because usually policy makers tend to look at the issue of illegal migration from Africa to the developed world, mostly to Europe and this report shows that unfortunately this issue also affects parts of Africa.

SAMBIRA: In the report, IOM talks about 20,000 people smuggled per year into South Africa, those are very large numbers.

CHAUZY: Tens of thousands of young men from East Africa, the Horn of Africa, mostly from Ethiopia and Somalia do engage every year on those dangerous smuggling routes to go to South Africa. They either take a sea route - and that is most of the case for Somalis - they will leave from Mogadishu, or from the Southern port of Kismayo, and then they will go to various places including obviously Mombassa, Dar es Salaam, Bujumbura, and Mozambique or they will take a land route which is again a very convoluted and dangerous land route that will eventually take them to South Africa.

SAMBIRA: There are lots of abuses that are cited here in terms of beatings and rapes and transporting people in airless containers. Is this something that happens often and how many people do you estimate perish by those means?

CAHUZY: Unfortunately, we do not know and I am not sure anyone has that number - how many people die during that irregular migration process but of course it is happening and very often it gets no publicity and all those tragedies go unnoticed.

SAMBIRA: When these migrants do reach South Africa and other countries like the US and Australia. Those who are not caught and manage to enter the country, what happens to them, what kind of life do they lead?

CHAUZY: Because of their lack of status, those migrants are exposed again to all forms of abuse and violence with no recourse because they have absolutely no status. What the report shows is those migrants seem to be ready to up with all those difficulties because their belief is that they will find some job opportunities to South Africa and be help the family back home through remittances, sending money back home to help the family that stayed in Kenya.

SAMBIRA: What recommendations is IOM making so that smugglers could be caught?

CHAUZY: Migrants whatever their status must have their fundamental rights respected. The second point of course is that the legislation should tackle the smugglers - those who organize and benefit from human smuggling and prosecute them accordingly. Of course that means looking at all the allegations of corruption that have been levied against officials in the countries that were surveyed. The third recommendation is very much for countries in the region: countries of origin, countries of transit such as Malawi, Zambia, Zimababwe, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda in some cases, to discuss work together with of course the authorities of South Africa to make sure that those migrant rights are protected along those routes as much as possible and to make sure there is better border management to address this blatant issue.

PRES: That was Jean-Philippe Chauzy of IOM on the irregular migration to South Africa.

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