Contact between smugglers and refugees and migrants in West and North Africa

This snapshot focuses on how smugglers and refugees and migrants make contact in West and North Africa. It draws on 3,602 surveys of refugees and migrants who had used a smuggler or smugglers, conducted in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Libya and Tunisia from February 2021 to March 2022. It also draws on 356 smuggler surveys conducted in the same countries over June-October 2021. It provides analysis of the channels and the timing of contact between migrants and smugglers.

This snapshot is produced in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Observatory on Smuggling of Migrants.