- A group of 24 Bangladeshi irregular migrants had stranded in the Mauritanian part of the Sahara desert while trying to reach Europe. After crossing half the world, the unlucky Bangladeshis have now been assisted to return to Dhaka.
The group was part of an increasing flow of irregular migrants travelling to Europe through the Maghreb. They were left stranded by smugglers en-route through the Mauritanian part of Sahara.
Without passports or food, they were located by the Mauritanian authorities and requested assistance to return home. The Bangladeshi consular authorities in Nouakchott arranged new travel documents and tickets to Dhaka, with the assistance of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), a humanitarian agency.
The migrants left Mauritania on 20 January and arrived in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on 22 January. Upon arrival, all received an IOM reintegration grant, according to information released by the organisation today.
Every year, over 250,000 migrants leave Bangladesh to work abroad in different countries. However, some are mislead by offers of travel assistance and easy job opportunities by middle-men claiming to be able to overcome travel restrictions.
While it is seldom that South Asian migrants get stranded in the remote Saharan desert, IOM reports that it had also assisted a group of Bangladeshi and Indian migrants that had stranded in Mauritania in October last year.
Resources were now being sought to assist similar cases, "abandoned in some of the world’s harshest conditions without food, documents or money," IOM reports.
It was unclear what had made the Bangladeshis chose the difficult and very dangerous route through the Sahara, which is mostly used by African migrants to Europe. Most illegal Asian immigrants enter Europe through Turkey, the Middle East or states of the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine and Byelorussia.
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