Youssef initially doesn’t want to remember the treacherous boat journey that took him from Egypt, then to Tobruk in Libya and finally to Italy, but he knows clearly why he left.
A young man in his 20s, Youssef is recently married and expecting a baby in a few months, and fears about the increasing cost of living in Egypt overwhelmed him. He gave in and contacted a people smuggler on the internet, using a Facebook group where those looking to migrate can post information about crossings.
“It was a difficult feeling,” said Youssef, whose name has been changed for his safety, when asked about leaving his family behind. “But what was more difficult is the feeling of death around you,” he said, describing the four-day boat journey between Libya and Italy. “It felt like watching life ebb away.”
Before Youssef left Egypt, he managed to scrape together a living as a driver making 2,000 Egyptian pounds (about £66.50) a month, after borrowing his family’s car. He said he decided to leave his wife three months into their marriage as he felt stifled in Egypt and wanted to escape for work in Italy, allowing him to send money home for the new baby.
“I couldn’t afford my living costs. Before I travelled to Italy, I was only managing to save 200 Egyptian pounds a month,” he said.
Like increasing numbers of young Egyptians, Youssef chose to flee Egypt’s deepening economic crisis and authoritarian repression. His journey followed a well-trodden migration route previously subject to an intense crackdown by the Egyptian state with support by the European Union. This path, from Egypt to the Libyan coast and then to Italy, has recently been resurrected after a five-year drop in numbers: over 20,000 Egyptians have arrived in Italy via Libya so far this year, almost three times the number who crossed by the same time last year, according to data from the Italian interior ministry.
They are fleeing a rapidly collapsing economy after the Egyptian pound lost over a third of its value against the dollar this year alone, alongside a spike in inflation that is causing a sharp rise in the cost of living as the state dives deeper into debt. The most recent official statistics on the country’s poverty rate, from at least three years ago, estimated that almost a third of the country lives below the poverty line. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who swept to power in a military coup in 2013, has spearheaded austerity measures that have driven a deep gulf between state-backed elites and increasing numbers of Egyptian citizens now struggling to survive.
“We see now that more Egyptians are arriving in Europe because of the economic and political situation there,” said Muhammad al-Kashef, a human rights lawyer and migration expert with Watch the Med and the Paris-based migration network Migreurop. “These are average people who had stayed out of hope, ones not part of any political movement, who believed Sisi’s promises through the years until the currency exceeded 20 Egyptian pounds – when he first came to power it was 6.5 to the dollar.”
Some, like Youssef, are choosing what they view as their only means of escape, to risk death on the journey to Europe. The EU’s asylum agency says 45,207 Schengen visas to legally enter Europe were issued in consulates across Egypt last year, meaning that roughly three in four applicants were granted a legal entry means. These numbers also represent less than a third of the Schengen visas issued annually to Egyptians in the years before the Covid pandemic, and a minuscule portion of Egypt’s 104 million population, many of whom say that a complicated, expensive and prejudiced visa application process deters using legal routes.
The resurrection of formerly thriving smuggling routes has also been attributed to the release of high-profile members of smuggling networks ensnared and imprisoned by the Egyptian state at least five years ago, following a string of boat disasters in 2015 and 2016 that left hundreds dead off Egypt’s northern coast.
Major smugglers, experts say, have now served their five-year prison sentence and returned to the only profession open to them, in large part due to the Egyptian military’s takeover of the fishing industry, depriving many boat owners of legal forms of work.
Large fishing boats that could have been used for legal work are now being used to transport people across the Mediterranean. “We’ve seen increased crossings from Tobruk in Libya since the end of October, when several boats with a lot of people on board left from Tobruk and reached the southern coast of Sicily,” said Maurice Stierl of Alarm Phone, an organisation that helps migrants who find themselves in distress during Mediterranean crossings. “We’re talking boats with 400 to 700 people on board – incredibly large old fishing vessels repurposed for crossing,” he said. “It’s a recent development that has intensified.”
Even at their larger size, he said, the boats are overcrowded and risk a dangerous journey. “We’re now in winter so the weather is changeable, all kinds of things can happen at sea. It’s an incredibly risky form of travel. The journey is long, and there are no NGOs conducting rescues in eastern Libya, so the boats have to get close to the European borders in order to be rescued,” Stierl said.
Hajj Mohammed, a Libyan smuggler who said both he and his brother had been working in smuggling for “a long time”, described how he arranges travel for prospective migrants. For a fee of 120,000 EGP (£4,000), he arranges their flight from Egypt to Libya and a place on a boat that can hold 250 people from the western city of Zuwara to Lampedusa in Italy. “My clients from Egypt are suffering under extremely harsh living conditions. That’s why they migrate,” he said.
Ayman, whose name has also been changed, is one of thousands of Egyptians who travelled from Zuwara to Italy. Like Youssef, he said he paid 100,000 EGP (£3,300) to a smuggler with the false name of Reda who is “famous on the internet, as whenever he smuggles a boat full of people he publishes or posts the trip on Facebook”. The smuggler in Zuwara that organised that leg of the trip, however, was perhaps even flashier. “He wore the uniform of the Zuwara police department and drove a Mercedes,” said Ayman, referencing the smuggler’s tight relationship with local authorities.
In late October, the EU signed the latest in a series of deals with Egypt intended to curb migration, this time with an €80m grant to further bolster the Egyptian coastguard and naval forces and stop the flow of people.
“The EU is willing to go far in order to close its borders and shut down crossings,” said Al-Kashef. “While it’s willing to open doors in similar cases for Syrians and Ukrainians, as they need people to work and pay taxes, they’re not happy to receive poorer Africans and invest in them.”
European funding has proved lucrative for the Egyptian security forces but risks doing little to stem smuggling networks now primarily based in Libya and where abuses proliferate. Last March, the German military announced a halt to a controversial programme to train members of the Libyan coastguard, formed from militias around the country’s coast, due to their abusive treatment of migrants.
Youssef said the rise in migration from Libya and Egypt is due to the light touch from authorities. “The Libyan authorities now seize one boat and let 50 others leave,” he said.
Additional reporting by Menna Farouk
