CONAKRY: With a determined look on her weathered face, Safiatou Bah has made up her mind: she will leave her young children behind and migrate to Europe on a new and perilous ocean route from Guinea.
\nThousands of young Guineans have attempted to migrate via the Atlantic in recent years, a flow so severe that authorities in the junta-led country have dubbed it a \u201chaemorrhage.\u201d
\nLacking both economic opportunity and any hope of change, the migrants are leaving from their own shores after neighboring Senegal and Mauritania and Morocco further north, beefed up controls.
\nHowever the longer voyage which begins farther south only increases the number of dangers they will face.
\nMost west Africans traveling the Atlantic route embark in pirogue canoes toward Spain\u2019s Canary Islands off northwest Africa, the jumping off point for their continued journey to the European continent.
\nAt least eight boats have left Guinea since the spring, each carrying more than a hundred people, according to migration NGOs.
\nBah, 33, initially left her village for the capital Conakry where she tried to do NGO work that didn\u2019t pan out. In the end, she started a fruit stand to make money to migrate.
\nHer husband, whom she was married off to at age 18, is now 75 and can no longer provide for the family.
\n\u201cI\u2019m the one raising my children alone,\u201d Bah told AFP.
\nHer decision to leave her three children, age 11 to six months, with her mother is firm: \u201cI\u2019m suffering here. You struggle and there\u2019s no one to support you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
– New route –<\/p>\n
Due to increasingly restrictive visa policies in Europe, migrants say their only option is illegal migration.
\nThe Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which monitors migration, confirmed the existence of the new Guinean route to AFP as well as the significant number of people taking it.
\nGuineans are now the leading African nationality \u2014 and the third largest group after Afghans and Ukrainians \u2014 to apply for asylum in France, the country\u2019s former colonial ruler.
\nIn 2024 a total of 11,336 asylum applications were made, according to France\u2019s refugee agency OFPRA.
\nMamadou Saitiou Barry, managing director of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad, confirmed that \u201cseveral thousand\u201d Guineans embark on the journey each year.
\n\u201cWe are aware of this, because it is us who lose our sons and these young people,\u201d he said.
\nMeanwhile Guinea has increased policing measures in an attempt to staunch the outward flow.
\nElhadj Mohamed Diallo, director of the Guinean Organization for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI), deals with these young people on a daily basis.
\n\u201cWhen you tell them that the route is dangerous, most reply: \u2018Where we are, we are actually already dead,\u2019\u201d he said, adding that they believe it is better to try.
\nEven among those with an education, finding a job can be an impossible task.<\/p>\n
– Scarring journey –<\/p>\n
Abdourahim Diallo, a young father of two, cannot find work and has lost all hope in his country, much like Bah.
\nAFP met him at a gathering of dozens of young people in Conakry\u2019s Yattaya T6 suburb, in an unelectrified shack being used as a cafe.
\n\u201cHere we have more than 150 young people and none of them has a job,\u201d Ibrahima Balde, head of a neighborhood young people\u2019s association, told AFP.
\nDiallo, who said he has \u201ca lot of family who are counting on me,\u201d is preparing to migrate for the fourth time.
\nHis shocking prior attempts, which left him with physical \u2014 and no doubt psychological \u2014 scars, span 2011 to 2024, leading him through Mali, Algeria and Morocco.
\nHe spent five years surviving in Morocco\u2019s Gourougou forest, which overlooks the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
\nThousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to enter the enclave eke out a living in the surrounding woods.
\nTo reach the area and escape authorities, one must jump from a moving train, according to Diallo, who said \u201csome break their feet while others die.\u201d
\nIn December 2011 he injured his head after attempting, along with hundreds of others, to scale the Melilla fence.
\nAnother time he nearly died when his pirogue capsized off Morocco.
\nOverall, he said, he has lost count of the arrests in Morocco, extortion by various police, and robberies along the way.
\nNext door to the cafe, 30-year-old Mamadou Yero Diallo is bent under the hood of a car in his garage.
\n\u201cWe manage, we earn a little for food, nothing more,\u201d he said, insisting he too will attempt the Atlantic route later this year.
\nAs for Bah, she became less confident in her upcoming journey when speaking about conversations she has had with those who returned.
\n\u201cThere are so many risks,\u201d she said, adding that she has heard of migrant women being raped.
\n\u201cBut I\u2019m still going,\u201d she said. \u201cI ask God to protect me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CONAKRY: With a determined look on her weathered face, Safiatou Bah has made up her mind: she will leave her young children behind and migrate to Europe on a new and perilous ocean route from Guinea. Thousands of young Guineans have attempted to migrate via the Atlantic in recent years, a flow so severe that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":90925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90926,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90908\/revisions\/90926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}