Migrate to live, not to die!

The Caravan

Passing both the cities as well as the most remote rural areas, the Caravan of Missing Migrants travels yearly through Senegal. Every year, more people disappear, and people are still willing to take the risk of going North. The Caravan targets both families, young people and the Senegalese government.

The Caravan’s aim is to make understood that borders kill and give a more thorough idea of what the lives of migrants look like in transit countries. In collaboration with local leaders and social workers, the caravan organizes in every place it passes through a get together called “Migrate to live, not to die”. With meetings, workshops, film screenings and open debates organized in all the places it passes through, the Caravan wants to paint a realistic picture of what migration to Europe entails, how its borders operate to push back and kill, and what the EU’s deals with transit countries mean on the ground.

Through Commemor’Actions, the Caravan creates a space in every place it stops to pay tribute to those who lost their lives because of border policies, to dignify the disappeared, and mostly to give families place to share their mourning and rage. It connects families of the disappeared and killed, and unites them in their fight for the truth about their loved one’s fates and the whereabouts of their bodies.

Every year again, at the end of the Caravan, Boza Fii submits a Letter of Protest to the Senegalese government. Because the Senegalese state signed deals with the EU and collaborates with Frontex, it is complicit in the border violence, all the while refusing to take responsibility for and invest in their own youth, nor strive to put in place programs that facilitate migration instead of making it a deadly endeavor.

Boza Fii

Boza Fii was​ founded in 2020 in Senegal by a group of people who had spent more than a decade at EU border in North Africa, had witnessed and experienced the extreme violence that it entails – all too often carried out by African States themselves, and had decided to return to Senegal.

Ever since, their goal is to fight for freedom of movement without the risk of death, to help victims of border regimes, both leaving and returning, and to fight Frontex wherever it is – in Europe, at the immediate border, or all the way in Senegal.

Boza Fii’s team is both expert on the transit context of Senegalese and other sub-Saharan migrants and of Frontex’ operations in Africa. A big part of their work consists of supporting returning or forcefully deported migrants who​​ are faced with serious psychological and material difficulties upon their return. Helping them reintegrate and rebuild their lives, they nevertheless strive for fairer visa policies and the principle of freedom of movement for all!

Boza Fii demands truth, justice and reparations for the victims of border policies and their families. They believes that the fight against the tragedies of migration must be waged in solidarity with those on both sides of the border, and engage often in collaborations.

Their yearly activities are the Caravan of Missing Migrants, national Commemor’Actions, their Push Back Frontex campaign opposing EU border policies in Senegal, and Chistmas Solid’Action, in which they support families of missing people during the holidays.

Het Actiefonds is proud to have supported this action and to be a regular partner of Boza Fii. We will stand in solidarity with all people fighting for freedom of movement, truth and justice, and against border policies!