Algeria has deported thousands of men, women, and children in "inhumane conditions", and in many cases without considering their legal status or individual vulnerabilities, Human Rights Watch has said.
Algeria has deported thousands of men, women, and children since January 2018 to Niger and Mali in inhumane conditions, and in many cases without considering their legal status in Algeria or their individual vulnerabilities, Human Rights Watch has said.
The organisation in April and May interviewed 30 sub-Saharan migrants of various nationalities who said that the Algerian authorities had raided areas where migrants are known to live, arresting them on the streets or on construction sites, and expelled them en masse at the border with Niger or Mali, in most instances with no food and little water.
They described being forced to march dozens of kilometers in the desert, in high temperatures, before reaching towns where they found assistance or private transportation.
Nighttime raids, no guarantees
All the migrants interviewed said that they were rounded up with dozens and sometimes hundreds of other sub-Saharan migrants, on the streets, during nighttime raids. They said that in most cases the police or gendarmerie agents did not ask to verify their documents. Some who said they had a valid visa or a certificate from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stating that the agency is reviewing their claim for refugee status tried in vain to convince the security forces that they were in Algeria legally. "They told us: 'You are all illegal here; you have no right to be in Algeria," one migrant told HRW.
"Algeria has the power to control its borders, but that doesn't mean it can round up people based on the color of their skin and dump them in the desert, regardless of their legal status and without a shred of due process," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
'End summary expulsions'
HRW reports that those interviewed said that Algerian police beat migrants, denied their requests to take their money and possessions with them, and on several occasions stole their phones and other possessions. The summary expulsions also separated families. The overall number of sub-Saharan migrants expelled from Algeria since the beginning of the operations of mass expulsions, in December 2016, is not known.
As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1987 Convention against torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, HRW recalls that Algeria is barred from forcibly removing any refugee or asylum seeker to a place where they would face a threat of being persecuted, or anyone else to a place where they would probably be tortured or subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.
The Algerian government should therefore end the arbitrary and summary expulsions of migrants and develop a system for the fair and legal processing of irregular migrants. It should include the right to challenge their expulsions and facilitate the timely voluntary repatriation of migrants who wish to return to their country of origin, the organization concluded.