More than 40,000 people have crossed the border into Egypt over the past few weeks.
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CAIRO/TUNIS –
Egypt is increasingly voicing its impatience with having to host millions of refugees and migrants as the exodus of tens of thousands of Sudanese fleeing the conflict at home seems to be making the cost of the burden unbearable.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told an Egyptian TV channel Tuesday that Egypt is committed to international agreements and treaties that require it to provide protection for refugees but added that Europe should also abide by its international obligations regarding refugees and displaced persons.
Shoukry’s statements reflected Egypt’s growing unease with the inflow of Sudanese refugees across its southern borders and the lack of international financial and logistical support, especially from Europe.
During a recent interview with Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi voiced wariness about the impact of the civilian exodus from Sudan on his country.
Sisi complained that the influx of refugees will compound Egypt’s economic pressures. “We are experiencing high inflation and the prices of daily necessities are surging,” he said.
“There are already millions of Sudanese in Egypt,” he told the Japanese daily noting that, “There are (also) between eight million and nine million” refugees from Libya, Syria, Yemen and other African nations.
More than 40,000 people have crossed the border into Egypt over the past few weeks.
Cairo fears the influx of refugees will compound its economic woes and could even undermine the country’s stability.
There are also concerns some of the refugees could be increasingly tempted to cross the sea to Europe.
Egypt has so far managed to control its Mediterranean borders and prevent an outflow of illegal migrants, similar to that from Libyan and Tunisian shores.
Migration control has contributed to the improvement of Cairo’s relations with European countries and has helped contain the EU’s criticism of Cairo’s human rights record.
The mutually convenient arrangement may have become untenable with mounting domestic pressures and an unpredictable situation in Sudan, experts say.
Even if a ceasefire is reached in Sudan, it will take a long time before stability is restored.
Ayman Nasri, head of the Arab-European Forum for Dialogue and Human Rights, told The Arab Weekly that Egypt may not be able to bear the high cost of hosting refugees without greater international assistance.
According to experts, Cairo feels it needs a more commensurate financial assistance and more border-control equipment and security coordination as it is also concerned about cross-border infiltration of Egyptian territory by extremists.
Shoukry has just visited Chad and South Sudan to discuss means of containing fallouts from the Sudan conflict, including the possible infiltration of its own border by extremists based in Sudan.
Sudan has for years constituted one of the main illegal migration routes to Europe from sub-Saharan Africa.
Before March 2019 and the popular protests which toppled Bashir, the EU used to finance a border management programme with the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which involved training, equipment and an “intelligence centre” in Khartoum.
“The fact that Sudan’s role as a buffer zone to contain migration before it reaches the shores of the Mediterranean is now in jeopardy is certainly a source of severe anxiety for the EU in general, and for the EU Mediterranean countries in particular”, Elie Abouaoun, MENA director for the US Institute for Peace (USIP) told The Arab Weekly.
“Obviously, a protracted conflict in Sudan will severely impede the EU efforts to control the flow of refugees through Sudan,” said Abouaoun.
“ The example of Sudan, added to others, shows the limitations and short-sightedness of those migration policies that rely on outsourcing migration control to dictators, military juntas, rogue states or malicious non-state actors,” he added.
Politicising the issue
European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, met the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs during a recent visit to Cairo.
Sources in Cairo said Egypt stressed during the meeting the need for the EU to look at cooperation over illegal immigration “not only for a technical viewpoint but also from a political perspective.”
Egypt has so far received modest amounts of aid amounting to 63.6 million euros ($69.5 million) from the EU emergency fund for Africa, at the beginning of this year.
Last October, the European Union signed an agreement with Egypt that resulted in its inclusion in the first phase of the border management programme, providing 80 million euros ($87 million) in support, in addition to the European Union’s financing of Egyptian labour training.
Cairo is today flustered not only by the lack of further support but by the EU’s continued human rights criticism of Egypt, Nasri added.
Shoukry implicitly alluded to the issue in his interview saying that “Europe always talks about human rights while there is no higher issue than the right of life of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese.”
In all directions
The problem is not about to improve soon. Thousands of Sudanese are trying to exit the country, many of whom are crossing the borders with Egypt, Chad and South Sudan.
More than 150,000 have already fled the country, UN agencies said this week. No less than 800,000 could eventually leave, including refugees currently living temporarily in Sudan.
More than 15,000 people have fled Sudan to Ethiopia via Metema since fighting broke out in Khartoum in mid-April, with an average of 1,000 arrivals registered every day.
About 20,000 refugees crossed into Chad from western Sudan’s violence-plagued Darfur region in the first few days of fighting, according to the United Nations.
Although Egypt’s border with Sudan is about 150 kilometres wider than that with Libya, a steady breakdown of authority in Sudan could allow more illegal migrants to trickle into Libya.
Authorities in eastern Libya have taken additional security measures along the 400 kilometre and porous border with Sudan, as they say they fear that events in Khartoum “may negatively impact the Libyan-Sudanese borders and be exploited by criminals and smugglers,” according to a statement released by the Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM).
But the harsh climate and perilous travel involved from North Darfur would make that task daunting.
Whether via Chad and Algeria or through Libya and Egypt, chaos in Sudan could eventually fuel illegal migration towards European shores.
There have been Tunisian social media reports of Sudanese refugees reaching the city of Sfax in Tunisia from Algeria and before that from Chad.
Ahmed Jamal in Cairo and The Arab Weekly staff in Tunis contributed to this report.