EU-AU summit mulls alliance to combat illegal migrants

By Simon Deng

European Union-African Union summit plans to seal a deal on combating illegal migration, human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

The event is scheduled for February 17 and February 18 in Brussels, said Christian Bader, the European Union ambassador to South Sudan.

“The reason we want to have this new alliance is because we have a lot of challenges, we have trade issues that we would like to improve and we have other issues related to movement of people, completely legally unwanted immigration, we want to fight it,” said Bader.

He said focus would be on a partnership for enhanced migration on mobility cooperation to avoid illegal migration.

South Sudan is a nation that has continuously dealt with longstanding conflict and instability including conflict-related, sexual violent crimes and human trafficking. Juba Airport has allegedly been singled out as a route for migrant smuggling.

Bader said EU’s relation with Africa needs to be reviewed for stronger partnership.

Marc Trouyet, the France Ambassador to South Sudan said the new Alliance will help the EU and the African Union to combat migrant smuggling.

“This summit is going to bring something new, there is initiatives on multilateralism, renewed Africa peace and security architecture, partnership for migration and mobility, there are a lot of mobility, we want to encourage mobility, combat illegal crossing and human trafficking,” said Trouyet

The EU and the AU are due to agree on an Africa-Europe Security and Stability architecture, a joint commitment to strengthen African capacities and support peace operations especially improvement on existing defense and security efforts.