A school helps immigrants in Mauritania. Is it enough to stop them from leaving Europe?

Nouadhibou of Mauritania (AP) – A desire student from all over West Africa raises his hands as a teacher to guide them through mathematics and classical Arabic. They then race outdoors, meeting with their parents who drive informal taxis or sardines in Chinese factories.

Outside, government billboards urged these families and others to fight “immigrant smuggling,” showing overcrowded ships sailing in the Atlantic Ocean’s thrash wave. Inside, posters warn the ocean that can be fatal.

This messaging is hard to escape from Nouadhibou, Mauritania’s second largest city and Nouadhibou on the increasingly popular immigration route. Immigration is resorting to longer, more dangerous routes as authorities strengthen security measures on long-standing routes. They ventured from Mauritania, with hundreds of miles of ocean and howling to reach the Canary Islands in Spain.

The route has put new pressure on the port city, which has 177,000 people on the edge of the Sahara Desert. The outdated infrastructure and unpaved roads have not kept pace as investments in Europe and China are pouring into the fishing industry and immigrants and their children arrive from Syria and Pakistan to the fishing industry.

Founded in 2018, the School of Immigration and Refugee Children is an early response to growing demand as part of the plan as a 210 million euro ($219 million) European Union and Mauritania last year.

The deal – one of several deals that Europe has signed with its neighbors to prevent immigration – funding plans to border patrols, development assistance and support refugee, asylum seekers and host communities.

This is a response to the alarm in Europe and the rise in anti-immigration politics. According to EU border Frontex, nearly 47,000 migrants arrived on the canary ship last year, which is “a record from Mauritania, even if the flow from other starting points declines.”

Tracking deaths at sea is difficult, but Spain’s nonprofit pedestrian border says at least 6,800 people died or disappeared when they tried to transit last year. The conditions are so severe that the ship loss route may end up in Brazil or the Caribbean.

While many complimentary initiatives meet the neglected needs of immigrants and refugees, few believe they will effectively block European departures, even the heads of groups running Nouadhibou schools.

“We can’t stop immigration,” said Amsatou Vepouyoum, president of Immigration and Refugee Organization of the city’s leading immigration aid organization. “But by raising awareness, we want to improve the conditions for people to leave.”

Prepare for an uncertain future

The organization conducted a survey of the immigrant population a few years ago and found that education is one of the biggest obstacles to Mauritania’s integration.

This is true around the world, says Bill Van Esveld, a child rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. He said.

“How can you be a human rights person in today’s world without literacy or arithmetic?” Van Esverde said.

Mauritania’s Ministry of Education confirmed in January’s directive that refugee children have the right to go to public schools. But this does not apply to many immigrants who do not qualify for refugees and face difficulty in enrolling because they lack birth certificates, residence documents or school records.

The schools for immigrants and refugee children aged 5 to 12 are parallel to the school system in Mauritania and teach similar courses and Arabic, aiming to include children in the sixth grade.

Families often do not intend to stay in Mauritania, but parents still describe schools as the lifeline of children’s future, no matter where they are.

“Sometimes life situations get you away from somewhere, so you get used to it and what ends up happening can lead to you staying,” Vepouyoum said.

Negligent and worried parents

From a European perspective, channel assistance to such an initiative is part of a larger effort to convince people not to move. Some experts say this also shows a disconnect between political goals and real reality.

“The EU always announces these big sums, but it’s very difficult to figure out how the money is actually spent,” said Ulf Laessing, director of Sahir’s program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank.

The EU and member states, as well as UN agencies, have highlighted the support of schools and organizations for migrants and refugees. No one said how much they spent on school or other programs targeting Mauritanian immigration.

Vepouyoum said the school also said that this would also charge students based on what families can afford so that it could pay rent on its two-story cinder construction and utilities.

But four parents who asked not to be named were worried that their children would be kicked out.

“If you can’t pay, they’ll kick you out,” said the father of two Mali students.

He said many parents want to give children that their motherland lacks. He heard from other parents that it is easier to go to school in the Canary Islands, but the limited educational opportunities there are also a problem.

Nuadenu’s school says it has educated more than 500 students. It has not tracked the number of people continuing to head to Europe.

The pressure to keep moving forward

The time of Nouadhibou is changing. Community leaders and business owners worry that increasing competition for jobs has raised suspicion about foreign-born communities.

These include workers who settled in the city’s neighbors Senegal and Mali a few years ago. Aid groups say outreach is easier in long-term immigration because new immigrants are worried about paying attention to themselves — sometimes because they are looking for smugglers to help them move forward.

Many immigrants say they just need help.

“We do this because we feel like there is no choice,” Breimma Mecca said.

The 29-year-old graduate has a teaching degree and is escalating as extremist violence becomes increasingly violent. For many days, he waited in the Nouadhibou Port with hundreds of other immigrants, hoping to work in the fish factory “cold room”.

But they are often turned away or withheld from payroll without a residence rights or work visa – if reported, the abuse they fear will bring revenge.

Mecca feels trapped in a country where deep racial divisions between Arabs and Black Africans are nearly impossible, and discrimination by employers is almost impossible. He wasn’t sure where to go next.

“Let me work. I can do a lot of work,” he said. “Everyone knows what to do.”

At the same time, he picked up his niece at a Catholic school every day, hoping that it would bring them this troubled life.

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