‘More EU-Sudan cooperation needed to combat human trafficking’: EU ambassador

The EU has called for greater cooperation with Khartoum on migration and combating human trafficking.

“More cooperation between Sudan and the EU is needed to protect asylum seekers, improve border management, confront smuggling, and provide meaningful alternatives to the migrants and the host communities,” said Ambassador Tomas Ulicny, Head of the EU Delegation to Sudan, in a statement on Thursday.

Heads of the diplomatic missions of the EU, Italy, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden in Khartoum visited the Wad Sharifey refugee camp in eastern Sudan on Wednesday.

“The causes for human smuggling and trafficking are linked to the low development rates in east Sudan in particular and the Horn of Africa in general,” Ulicny said.

The EU Ambassador did not specify what sort of cooperation he meant. Since 2011, the EU has provided €79.5 million ($88.3 million) for development in eastern Sudan.

The majority of the refugees in eastern Sudan come from Eritrea. In a report in June, the UN Human Rights Council referred to widespread “gross human rights violations” in Eritrea, including mass incarceration of political opponents, extra-judicial killings and torture. The Eritrean government dismissed the report.

Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees  in eastern Sudan are increasingly subjected to systematical abductions. After they are kidnapped, they are ‘sold’ to criminal gangs and subjected to torture, in order to pressure their relatives to pay large sums of money for their release. International organisations earlier referred to the involvement of Sudanese army and security officials in the human trafficking.