Niger repeals key law on irregular migrants to Europe

KIGALI, Rwanda

Niger’s military administration has revoked a law that was enacted to curb irregular migrants traveling from African countries through a key migration route in Niger en route to Europe.

“The convictions pronounced pursuant to said law and their effects shall be cancelled,” military leader Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, said in a decree that was issued late Monday.

Niger, under former President Mahamadou Issoufou, working with the EU, enacted the law in 2015 to stop people smuggling at the peak of an unprecedented wave of African migrants.

The law stipulated prosecution of smugglers who faced up to five years in prison if convicted.

But the latest move means all those convicted under the law would be released.

“No claim of any kind whatsoever” based on the repealed law is admissible, the government warned.

Niger’s Agadez region is a gateway from West Africa to the Sahara Desert and it has been one of the major routes for African migrants from West and Central Africa trying to reach Libya to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

Roughly 4,000 migrants travel through Agadez every week without documents, according to UN estimates.

Niger plunged into turmoil July 26 when Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, a former commander of the presidential guard, led a military intervention that ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.

The decision to repeal the law came in the context of targeted EU sanctions against Nigerien military authorities.

Last week, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the July “coup d'état” and called for the reinstatement of Bazoum’s government, more than three months after his overthrow.

Raphael Nkaka, a governance expert based in Rwanda's capital of Kigali, said military leaders must have repealed the law in “retaliation.”

“Current EU policy does not recognize the new leadership in Niger. The junta naturally feels irritated and might have revoked the law seeing it was more in the interest of the EU,” Nkaka told Anadolu.

The statement said the law was enacted under the “influence of foreign powers, criminalizing as illicit trafficking certain activities that are by nature regular.”

It added that the law was passed in “flagrant contradiction with our community rules and did not take into account the interests of Niger and its citizens.”

Barma Ibrahim, a Nigerien civil society actor told Anadolu that Niger’s advocacy associations had for long criticized the law as an “impediment to public freedoms by criminalizing migration, so the government listened to the outcry of the people.”