Next October 6th, the European Union (EU) will open a Centre for Migration in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Refugee organizations strongly criticise this “Centre d’Information et de Gestion de Migrations” (Cigem) even before it has become fully operational. They call it an “outpost watchtower of Fortress Europe”.
The Cigem will be staffed with fourty Malinese employees. It will be financed by Europe and provided with technical assistance of several European development agencies – figuring also the Belgian Development Cooperation Agency (BTC).
‘The Cigem is a pilot project.’, says Ilse Cougé of the European Commission, ‘For the first time the EU will help a sub-Saharan African country to solve its problems of both legal and illegal migration, by approaching the phenomenon in all its aspects. The centre aims to promote the mutual gains of legal migration, to discourage illegal migration, to profit from the transmission of diasporas’ funds and knowledge and to strive for a better understanding of the migration processes to develop an adequate policy.’
Organizations for refugees of Black Africa are stressing out the preventing focus of the centre. ‘Deterring illegal immigration is indeed one of our goals’, admits the freshly appointed Cigem director Abdulaye Konate, ‘but is not the only one.’ Aligning demand and supply on the regional labour market, thus helping more people in West Africa to obtain a job, is equally important and even a priority. The centre will therefore cooperate intensively with the Malinese “Agence Nationale pour l’emploi” (ANPE) – an agency similar to the VDAB in Belgium – and its younger section, the “Agence pour L’Emploi des Jeunes” (APEJ).
After visits of the European Commissioner Louis Michel (Development and Humanitarian Aid), the French development Minister Brigitte Girardin and the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Bernardino Leon, Mali was an eager client for the First European regional “migration centre”.
Although the centre is officially owned by the Malinese state, it is fully financed by Europe. Cigem is financed out of the development budget of the EU (more precisely the 9th European Development Fund): 10 million euro programmed for a period of three year.
