While Europe and its members are hotly debating, between openness and rejection, about the body and the presence of migrants, not everyone knows that in Côte d'Ivoire, one of the countries from which the largest number of people leave, awareness campaigns have been carried out for some years to counteract illegal migration.
The government also tried to convince them not to leave illegally, by proposing strong messages such as "Eldorado is here!". But Ivorians have good eyes, they can recognize whether or not paradise is the muddy neighborhood without sewage or running water where they live in shacks.
Now, past experience is offered as a new basis on which to build more structured interventions to combat irregular migration. One of these is called New Hopefunded by the EU and implemented by the international NGO Avsi ong, with six local organizations in Côte d'Ivoire.
The starting point of this project is a scientific research on who and why they emigrate from this African country, which today has a high GDP growth rate. One of the most interesting data from the research indicates that 90 % of those who emigrated and 100 % of potential migrants who have had the opportunity to leave are educated people.
The reaction to this data is twofold. On the one hand, it can easily be interpreted as follows: those who have studied have a greater self-awareness and wish to try to obtain a better life, to find a decent job. On the other hand, however, it is stressed that education alone is not enough to promote the development of the individual. Education without a means of work pushes people to want to flee, to risk their lives in the Mediterranean and to rely on human traffickers, just to have a chance. Provocatively, could it be deduced that, if all the schools in Africa were closed, the flow of migrants would stop?
The truth that emerges from listening to the testimony of a young migrant who returns, like Claude, to his shack of wood and plastic sheeting in the poorest suburb of Abidjan, is that in the heart of every man there is an irreducible desire that pushes him to find a greater good for himself and his own children. This desire is healthy, and with it, every aid project must become a reality. This desire cannot be betrayed, not even captured by illusory messages, but must be taken seriously and made real.
Degree in Classical Literature and PhD in Sociology of Communication. Communications Director of the AVSI Foundation, based in Milan, dedicated to development cooperation and humanitarian aid worldwide. She has received several awards for her journalistic activity.
