ReliefWeb

Key Updates

• Cross-border displacement to Maradi, Niger: In early March, UNHCR estimated that more than 7,660 people from northwest Nigeria had crossed the border into the Maradi region of Niger thus far in 2021, primarily women and children fleeing attacks in Nigeria’s Sokoto state. This brought the number of Nigerian refugees in the region to 77,000.

• Election related displacement in Central African Republic (CAR): Violence surrounding elections on 27 December 2020 in CAR caused large-scale displacement, with UNHCR reporting as of late March that some 132,810 people had been newly displaced within the country since the beginning of the electoral crisis, and that 114,932 people had fled to Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo since then.

• Canary Islands arrivals: Continuing the trend seen in 2020, approximately half of arrivals to Spain in the first quarter of the year were to the Canary Islands. Despite a drop in arrivals in February, some 3,215 refugees and migrants arrived by sea to the Canary Islands during the first quarter of the year.

• Expulsions from Algeria: While there seems to have been a lull in the beginning of the year, some 6,249 individuals were expelled from Algeria into Niger in March.

• Gambia migrant killings re-examined: New evidence presented to the Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission directly connected former president Yahya Jammeh to the summary execution of more than 50 West African migrants in 2005.