Roma Termini is a cavernous, polyglottic cacophony of German, French, Italian, and English -- bickering, raucous, ebbing, and flowing. The deluge swallowed me up as I stepped out into the terminal, as did the cold November drizzle.
I had come here on a mission. I was visiting
Somali immigrant communities in Europe to shed light on the challenges faced by
the Somalia Diaspora. Several hours earlier, I had broken the Ramadan fast with
a Somali family in Lyon, living in one the city’s banlieues – an ethnic ghetto
of mostly African and Arab immigrants. Rome was my last stop and my host was a
man by the name of Hasan Sugule Hirsi, the Somali consul to Italy.
He picked me up in a rusty Fiat Uno–no
frills, nothing to indicate that he was a diplomatic representative to the
world’s eighth largest economy. After a quick “Salaam” I squeezed into the
passenger seat and we were off. It was 2004, 12 years after Somalia
self-destructed, leaving no functioning government in the country. Everyone
called Hirsi “signor ambasciatore”, (the actual ambassador left the country
following outbreak of civil war), but in reality his position was more opaque.
With no government to represent, there was no one to pay his salary, and no one
to maintain the Embassy or Consulate.
We reached our destination: the Somali
consulate in Rome, an unassuming brick building on a corner street. The black
iron gates screeched in protest as we entered the small courtyard and headed
toward the ambassador’s office.
Passing through the dim reception hall, we
sidestepped the beds and folded cots that lined the room and avoided stepping
on the towels, diapers, and gas heaters that littered the floor. Nearly thirty
women and their children were staying at the consulate. The men, 150 in all, were
at the rundown embassy across the city. They were all refugees and most entered
Italy illegally from small towns and villages throughout Somalia. They crossed
the Sahara into Libya and, from there, paid a smuggler to get them across the
Mediterranean to Italy, the gateway into Europe. They were detained, processed, and then released
with temporary stay permits. They eventually made their way to Rome where they
found themselves homeless and unwelcome. With nowhere else to turn they ended
up here.
Hassan talked to me of this and more: there
was an abandoned train station in Rome that was home to hundreds of refugees –
mostly Sudanese he told me. Hundreds of rickety boats containing migrants from
sub-Saharan Africa landed on Italian shores each year – that year over 20,000
people had reached Italy by boat.
It is eight years later and not much has
changed. I am in my office as I recall those three days in Rome – in front of
me are several news articles from the past month: a boat containing 62 Somali
migrants was caught off the coast of Malta – one of the woman gave birth during
the journey; twenty-four people drowned off the western coast of Turkey when
their boat heading to Europe sunk; last week six migrants died trying to get to
the island of Sicily.
From Greece to Italy to Spain, Europe has
become increasingly hostile toward the thousands of migrants who land on their
shores each year. The EU established a
new agency Frontex, which intercepts immigrants at EU borders and coastal
waters; Greece put up a barb-wire fence along the Turkey-Greek border and
legislation has been put in place that allows EU members, such as Germany &
France, to return illegal migrants to their point of origin in Europe. Despite
these attempts at creating a European fortress of sort, the demand for
migration hasn’t lessened.
Instead of creating a
militarized European border, which has led to increasing human rights
violations and has not impeded desperate migrants from finding new ways to
bypass border security, a solution that addresses the root causes of migration
is needed. Many migrants leave their home countries in order to diversify their
livelihoods, increase their incomes and protect their families from risk. By
having one or two family members working in Europe, households have a steady
source of income.
In Somalia, 70% of youth
have said they want to leave the country, primarily because of chronic
unemployment, which is part of why I am working on promoting entrepreneurship. By
creating sustainable livelihoods for youth through entrepreneurship, I am
hoping that these youth will not feel compelled to set themselves adrift into
the Mediterranean Sea in search of jobs.
As a Somalia migrant myself,
I feel it is my duty to give the youth of my country an alternative to
dangerous means of fleeing. What if the millions
the EU spends on inefficient and ineffective border enforcement systems was
directed toward creating opportunities in communities stricken by poverty? What
if all those Somalis, warehoused at the Italian embassy, were back at home,
working on innovations that made their own country better?
Image: Somali Diaspora Some rights reserved by African Diaspora Institute
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