Sudan to benefit from EU package to tackle irregular migration

The European Commission (EC) has today approved a €170 million package of 11 new actions under the EU Trust Fund for Africa to improve stability and address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement in the Horn of Africa.

It is the fourth package of actions in the Horn of Africa conducted under the EU Trust Fund, the European Commission says in a press statement on Thursday.

With this package, Sudan will benefit from regional projects to build the capacities of countries of the Horn of Africa to manage migration. This includes the fight against human trafficking and smuggling of migrants, and the development of rights-based and sustainable return and reintegration policies (€30 million).

A project in three cross-border areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Sudan is planned to address “the drivers of instability and forced displacement, and support cross-border peaceful cooperation and sustainable economic growth” (€63.5 million),

The package will also support the people in Sudan with three projects “to address instability and forced displacement through resilience actions to improve access to, and quality of, primary education, benefiting 90,000 children and training 2,000 teachers country-wide (€22 million), strengthen livelihoods in the southern and eastern regions (€9 million), and enhance nutrition of 400,000 women and children in the north-east of Sudan (€8 million).

Other beneficiaries are the large numbers of South Sudan refugees and host communities in northern Uganda (€10 million), young unemployed people in Kenya, Djibouti, and Eritrea who will benefit from projects creating employment opportunities to address socio-economic grievances of (totalling €25 million).

Included in the package is the development of “a regional monitoring and learning system (€2 million) to complement the on-going Research and Evidence Facility which is expected to include (but not be limited to) information on the drivers of migration, dynamics of cross-border economies and centre/periphery relations, drivers of radicalism and violent extremism”.

The EC says in the press statement that the actions will build on previous packages of actions worth €253 million, €117 million, and €66.5 million, “committed under the EU Trust Fund in the last 12 months to tackle instability and the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement; all of which are part of an ongoing response to the commitments made by the EU and African partners at the Valletta migration summit of November 2015”.

The EC launched an “Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa” at the Valletta migration summit in November 2015. The Fund is made up of over €2.4 billion from the EU budget and European Development Fund, combined with contributions from EU Member States and other donors.