Forum des Peuples Gao 2006 talks on Migration

The People's Forum is a popular manifestation to educate, exchange, communicate, inform, plan citizens' actions and elaborate alternatives to neoliberal globalization.

This forum, the 5th edition, is devoted to the evaluation of the four previous editions and to several crucial topics such as immigration, plunder of the natural resources of the South or privatization of state-owned enterprises. Here's what the chairperson of CAD-Mali (Coalition for African Alternatives Debt and Development), Mrs Barry Aminata Touré, said in her :: opening speech on migration:


As regards immigration, Europe closes itself and imposes on the Sub-Saharan African countries the opening of their market. In short, capital must circulate but not human beings. This is a violation of all international conventions. The unbalanced negotiations worsened the situation of over-indebtedness and poverty in our countries.

A significant number of young people, confronted by social and economic insecurity and in a desperate situation, with partnership agreements disregarding the human being, choose the alternative: international immigration. Many of them take the dangerous ways of Sahara and of the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

Africa holds the sad record of having the most wars and conflicts in the world. Those generate million deaths, casualties, displaced people as well as environmental catastrophes. The plundering of the resources by multinationals and arms companies which have a reputation in the West, is carried out with the complicity of the local kleptocracies and of the surrounding countries. This plays a primary role in the triggering and perpetuation of the conflicts. We can only develop in peace. The social/armed conflicts are one of the major obstacles to the development of Africa.