Stranded in Tunisia

SFAX, Tunisia—First, it was the heat that threatened death. On his journey from Guinea to Tunisia, 17-year-old Kebba and a dozen other African migrants spent weeks traversing some of the Sahara’s most unforgivable stretches. Days passed without food or water, he said, and several perished. Kebba thought the worst was behind him when he arrived in Tunisia’s port city of Sfax in May, now the epicenter of overseas migration to Europe. But that was before the violence started.

Stoked by Tunisian President Kais Saied, simmering xenophobia and anti-Black racism have exploded into plain view in the city, reaching an apex in early July after a Tunisian man was killed during an alleged confrontation with several Cameroonian migrants. Revenge attacks and arbitrary expulsions by police ensued, and Kebba watched as the place he fought so hard to reach threatened to return him to the dangers he barely escaped.

“I thank God I am still alive,” the teenager said in late July, sitting in a trash-strewn alley near the center of town. “I wonder now, what is next? What are they going to do to us next?”

Kebba’s anxiety, echoed by dozens of other migrants this summer, was clearly warranted. In late September, authorities severely reduced humanitarian aid to migrants in Sfax and expelled hundreds from the city center into surrounding suburbs. It was just the latest in a series of roundups of Black migrants in Sfax, largely considered retaliation for the Tunisian man’s death in July. That month, an estimated 1,200 migrants were forcibly transported over the Tunisian border—the largest such expulsion so far—and left stranded in the Libyan desert, drawing condemnation from human rights organizations and the United Nations. More than two dozen migrants died, and many still remain unaccounted for. Among those missing is Kebba’s best friend from home.

“I don’t have communication with him again. So that’s the pain I’m feeling now,” he said quietly.

Though reliable figures are hard to come by, estimates put the numbers of Black African migrants living in the Sfax region in the thousands, most driven by war, poverty, and a lack of opportunity to journey north in hopes of making it to Europe.

Many, like Kebba (he declined to give his last name out of security concerns), feel locked in an impossible limbo—unable to live safely and unable to afford to leave via an increasingly deadly central Mediterranean crossing. More than two dozen other migrants told similar stories.

“This is a humanitarian crisis both in the areas where migrants are stranded in Sfax and on the borders but also on the Tunisian coast, in terms of the number of dead and missing,” said Romdhane Ben Amor, a spokesperson for the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), the country’s leading NGO advocating for migrants. “Now, we’re talking about more than a thousand dead and missing on the Tunisian coast, knowing that the next few months will also see waves of departures.”

Hostility between Sfax’s residents and Black migrants began escalating following a speech by Saied in February, in which he blamed the migrant population for the country’s increasing economic woes and accused migrants of trying to change the country’s demographic makeup. “The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” Saied said, adding that unnamed parties were allegedly resettling Black migrants in Tunisia for money.

In the months since, the president and his government have continued to vilify Black migrants in language broadly criticized as racist and conspiratorial, painting them as criminals and economic burdens dangerous to the country and its citizens. Alissa Pavia, the associate director of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Program, described Saied’s xenophobic statements as an attempt to deflect public attention from a worsening economic situation, which some fear could soon lead to defaults on foreign loans, instead pointing the finger at Black migrants.

In a July report published by FTDES, a large majority of Black migrants surveyed reported feeling fear and anxiety and told of firsthand experiences of racist discrimination and harassment. Further, the organization has reported instances of the Tunisian security authorities warning Tunisian merchants, craftsmen, and homeowners to not employ immigrants or rent them apartments and houses.

This is despite the country’s then-heralded 2018 law criminalizing racial discrimination, described by Human Rights Watch as “pioneering legislation.” As insecurity in the city worsens, many migrants are now living outside, either unable to find temporary housing or chased from their homes by police intimidation, resident attacks, and burglary.

Sfax’s city center offers a glaring tableau of the crisis and resulting segregation. In the central roundabout Bab Jebli, hundreds of Black migrants have been camping out in the open, choosing safety in numbers. Many were forced out of homes and apartments in the summer by authorities and local residents. Young men, single mothers, married couples with children, and pregnant women all huddle together under sparse shade; a lucky few have a thin mattress, while the rest sleep in the dirt or on weathered pieces of cardboard.

Anas Hakim, the head of the Red Crescent in Sfax, estimated that there were at least 1,500 migrants living just in the city center in July, not including those living on the outskirts or near the region’s long coastline. That number is even more in doubt now, after an estimated 500 migrants living in and around the Bab Jebli roundabout were expelled and transported several miles outside the city, according to observers and human rights organizations.

Among the maze of merchant stalls in the Sfax medina, where Black migrants go to buy food and other items, discrimination has become a near daily occurrence. Many migrants report being denied service by sellers, followed, or insulted. The atmosphere in the city has become so charged that some Black Sfaxians, too, are feeling unsafe in their home city.

“There was no discrimination before. We were treated normally, respectfully in our schools, in our work—we had no problem at all,” said 46-year-old Sfax native Hania. “It changed about a year ago, when the sub-Saharan migrants started to become numerous in the city.”

Hania’s neighbor, 48-year-old Manel, said that as a result, a lot of her family members recently decided to leave Sfax to go to Tunis or are moving abroad. Neither woman wanted to share her last name, for fear of being recognized, and both were reluctant to talk too long about their experiences in public. “Our hearts are full of stories to share, if only we had the time. Life is hard. We’re so tired of it,” Manel said.

Occasionally, locals—mainly women—will give her needed supplies when they see her, such as diapers and baby clothes for her daughter. But like the majority of the migrants interviewed, including several women with small children, Nanah said she received little to no food or medical aid, and any help from NGOs or from well-meaning locals is intermittent.

Hakim’s Red Crescent office began mobilizing on July 7 and has been relying on between 15 and 20 volunteers to hand out meals and bottles of water, which are provided by the International Organization for Migration and local NGO Terre d’Asile.

“I think that international organizations should intervene immediately,” Hakim said in late July. “The conditions that the migrants are living in is the most difficult thing to witness: the heat, the sun, no toilet, no shower. It’s hurtful to see.”

But since early September, regional authorities have minimized what was already an insufficient amount of food aid to migrants in the city.

“This is a security strategy to force migrants out of public spaces in Sfax,” Ben Amor said of the restrictions on needed aid. “Instead of taking humanitarian decisions that would allow migrants and refugees to rent apartments or be housed in reception centers, [the authorities] resort to these repressive security solutions to force migrants to leave the places where they gather.”

While humanitarian assistance remains negligible, the European Union has offered the Tunisian government millions of euros to tighten its border controls and crack down on smuggling networks feeding the demand for Mediterranean crossings from its shores. The funds have not yet been finalized, however. In early October, Saied rejected a revised proposal of 127 million euros ($133 million), significantly smaller than the original 1 billion euro deal.

Pavia describes the proposed deal as a continuation of the EU’s “fortress Europe” approach, which has already seen EU funds go into the pockets of countries such as Turkey and Libya despite appalling human rights records.

“By doing this, they legitimize Saied and his power grab, and they legitimize his dealing with the migration issue, and they turn a blind eye to human rights abuses,” Pavia said.

Despite all this, migrants themselves still see Tunisia as a desirable departure point. In a UNHCR briefing last month, New York office director Ruven Menikdiwela attributed this move toward Tunisia on incidents of harassment, violence, and collective expulsions in neighboring Libya and Algeria, which have convinced many migrants that Tunisia is the safer bet.

According to UNHCR, Italy saw migrant arrivals from Tunisia increase nearly sixfold between January and June this year compared with the same period last year, and the numbers continue to rise. Arrivals increased by another 56 percent between June and July, a 71 percent jump compared with the same period last year. Of the more than 23,000 refugees and migrants who survived the perilous journey in July, 86 percent departed from Tunisia.

Approaching dusk in late July on the road connecting Sfax to the town of Luza, a popular departure point, dozens of Black migrants lined the dusty shoulder heading toward the sea, their hopes pinned on Europe. But Harouna Bandaojo, a 22-year-old migrant from Burkina Faso, ambled in the opposite direction, into the groves of olive trees where he slept. Sfax was now too dangerous, he said, and two failed crossings had left him nearly penniless. What little money he can spare goes toward phone calls to his worried parents back home.

“I don’t know what to say to them because the situation I’m in is very, very difficult. I don’t know what to say,” Bandaojo said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I don’t know whether I’m going to die or move on.”

Reporting for this article was partly funded by the Global Journalism department at New York University.