Six Sudanese refugees were arrested early this week at the Agadeer camp in northern Niger following a protest against what demonstrators described as the mishandling of refugee issues by the UN refugee agency’s Niger office and local authorities, witnesses and camp residents said.
Refugee representative Adam al-Tahir told Darfur24 that deteriorating humanitarian, living, security and health conditions at Agadeer have driven repeated demonstrations, most recently in March, with no meaningful response. He said thousands of Sudanese who fled the war via Chad, deportees from Tunisia, and evacuees previously airlifted from Libya and awaiting third-country resettlement are living in severe hardship.
According to residents, police raided the camp at the start of the week and detained six people: Musa Huda Mohammed, Mohamed Abdullah, Abdullah Hashim, Imad Younis, Zubeida Abdeljabbar, and Dawood Juma Zahra. The detainees were first taken to the Agadeer police station and later moved to the southern city of Zinder.
Camp sources said Agadeer lacks basic services and that authorities restrict refugees from working or engaging in commerce and limit their movement inside the country. They alleged that after more than six sit-ins at UNHCR offices and the formation of a negotiating committee, the agency and local authorities agreed to detain committee members in a military-led operation—an accusation that could not be independently verified.
Refugees interviewed urged UNHCR headquarters in Geneva to intervene urgently to evacuate Sudanese from Niger, secure rapid solutions, and release the detainees.
UNHCR’s Niger office says the country hosts about 580,000 people of concern: 48% internally displaced, 43% refugees, 6% returnees, and 2% asylum seekers and others. Most refugees in Niger originate from Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria. Niger was also the first country to receive evacuees from Libya via the Emergency Transit Mechanism in 2018.
