Better Migration Management: When EU Border Funding Enabled War and Forced Displacement to Europe
In 2014, the European Union launched the Better Migration Management initiative as part of the Khartoum Process, aiming to enhance co-operation with Horn of Africa countries to curb irregular migration. However, this initiative, funded by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) with more than 200 million euro, turned into an unintended tool for empowering security forces that later became a party to the devastating war in Sudan.
The EU relied on the Khartoum government at the time to carry out border monitoring tasks, leaving it free to choose the security tools it deemed appropriate. It was no surprise that Bashir’s regime selected the Rapid Support Forces, the militia formerly known as the Janjaweed, to serve as the security arm for border management. Thus, European funds, albeit indirectly, contributed to strengthening this militia, which today stands as one of the main parties to the war tearing Sudan apart.
The matter did not stop there. Accusations against the United Arab Emirates for arming the Rapid Support Forces through European companies highlight the continued indirect support for this militia. Bulgarian and British-made weapons were smuggled into Sudan via the UAE, in clear violation of the European arms embargo. Even the European Union’s own acknowledgment, in July 2026, of the UAE’s role in fuelling the war did not translate into practical measures to halt this flow.
Today, after the Rapid Support Forces have become one of the most brutal parties to the conflict in Sudan, millions of Sudanese are living under the weight of war and displacement. Millions have fled to safe havens: Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Eritrea, Libya, and Europe, leaving behind homes destroyed by a war that the European Union, in its own way, helped to empower one of its parties. This is the historical paradox: policies designed to keep migrants away from Europe’s borders have today become a reason for even more of them to flow towards it.
Picture: 50 out of many
In Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Sudanese face forced deportation to Sudan and arbitrary detention in Egypt, which claimed the lives of 12 people in 2026, among them a teenager under 18.
Hell never stops chasing Sudanese. In Libya, refugees live in a state of lawlessness in a country controlled by militias. Sudanese are torn between enslavement
and unpaid labour, or kidnapping and forced work for military militias. This systematic violence leaves Sudanese with only two options: either return to the spectre of war or attempt the Mediterranean cemetery, only to face Europe’s other repressive mechanisms represented by Frontex or coast guards funded by Europe. Italy renewed its memorandum of understanding with the Libyan government in Tripoli by the end of 2025, and on another front, Greece did not hesitate to sign agreements and support the coast guard affiliated with Haftar’s militias in eastern Libya. All of this results in refugees either dying at sea or being tortured in detention centres across Libya.
Survivors of all this hell face Europe’s true face in Greece, Italy and Spain’s Canary Islands. Greece, which signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees in 1959, now practises legal bullying by violating the convention. With every boat arriving on its shores, it arrests between one and five people on charges of illegal entry and people smuggling, despite Sudanese being classified as refugees and granted asylum at a rate of 99 per cent, which contradicts Article 31 of the convention, which states that states shall not impose penalties on refugees on account of their illegal entry or presence, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.
Greece detains them for six months before they face trials that result in sentences ranging from 10 to 25 years, in proceedings that are, to say the least, not fair trials. There is no adherence to initial investigation procedures with the presence of an interpreter and a lawyer, nor a legal interpreter during the trial, nor provision of a state-appointed lawyer with sufficient time to study the case. Instead, defendants meet their lawyer on the day of the trial, allowing them only 10 minutes to speak before the trial proceeds, or defendants must pay between 1,500 and 2,000 euro to secure a private lawyer. Defendants sign documents without translation, and due to the state lawyer’s limited time for defence, they often propose that defendants sign a court agreement to receive a lighter sentence of 10 years.
However, because defendants do not understand Greek, they sign this agreement, which strips them of the right to appeal and the right to seek asylum, as by signing they admit to being genuine smugglers who took money from other refugees to bring them to Greece.
Inside prison, conditions are no better. There is one meal a day, sometimes pork, meaning those who do not eat pork go hungry for two days. Visits are restricted to first-degree relatives in most prisons. They cannot communicate with their families by phone as their phones are confiscated. Every three months, they receive hygiene products like soap and toothpaste, and medical care is only provided when they reach a critical stage as determined by the authorities’ discretion.
Currently, in Greece, there are more than 2,600 refugees and migrants in Greek prisons, making them the second largest prisoner group, with Sudanese representing about 20 per cent, more than 500 prisoners. Through the 50 Out of Many campaign, we provide them with legal and humanitarian support.
Picture: 50 out of many. Banner “No to the criminalization of migration. Smuggler is not the one driving the boat”
We believe that rights are equal, and just as we struggled and faced a dictatorial regime in Sudan until it fell in the December 2018 revolution, we will bring down these repressive and unjust laws. Sudan will be liberated from neocolonialism, and Sudanese will be freed from these dark prisons.
Mustafa Ahmed, 50 out of many
