At a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise in Ireland, one of the world’s poorest countries is sheltering more than 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers.
Niger’s interior minister told The Irish Times journalist, Sally Hayden, “he cannot envisage a cut-off point when they would stop taking people.”
The award-winning author recently visited the west African country, as well as Senegal where she interviewed President Michael D Higgins as part of his official visit.
“We have to think about borders and states again,” he told Hayden in Dakar. Does that mean getting rid of borders? “I think it will have to be, in a way.” Different types of movement need to be re-examined too. “What is a calculated decision? What is an enforced decision? What is a casual decision?”
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His comments come as the Department of Justice here grapples with increased numbers of people seeking international protection.
An issue seized on by anti-immigrant and far-right activists relates to figures showing 5,000 of those either lost or destroyed their travel documents before arriving at Irish immigration control last year.
Hayden, who has written extensively on the world’s deadliest migration routes in her book “My Fourth Time, We Drowned,” told In The News many people trying to get to Europe from Africa use fake documents because they either don’t have their own passport or may have been supplied a counterfeit one by people smugglers.
Asked about those seeking sanctuary in Niger, Hayden says the vast majority of the country’s 303,000 refugees are coming from Nigeria; including the country’s northwest, where armed gangs – operating for profit - are terrorising communities on an industrial scale.
“Everyone I spoke to said they wanted to keep welcoming [the refugees],” Sally tells In The News. “They said they can’t turn them away and they will share what they have. A lot of people told me, particularly in Islam, their belief is that you must share what you can.”
While Niger is a nation of over 25 million people, two in five people live in extreme poverty and the country faces particular challenges relating to climate change and food insecurity.
It ranks 189th out of 191 countries on the UN’s human development index, which measures life expectancy, education and GNP per capita.
Only Chad and South Sudan are less developed. By comparison Ireland ranks 8th on the index, with Switzerland topping the table.
“I’ve been amazed by the generosity in Niger and also in Somalia. More than one million [people] were displaced by the latest drought in August last year. I’ve met so many people who put together what they could to help them. There’s charity and generosity happening on levels that go unappreciated. I think sometimes it feels in Ireland, people can get very hung up on the situation domestically without having an appreciation of what others are going through”
