A/HRC/41/38/Add.1 their workforce. Eighty per cent of the migration in West and Central Africa is internal to the region.1 5. With a population of 17,138,707,2 the Niger faces multiple development, security and humanitarian challenges. It is at the bottom of the human development index 3 and is ranked twenty-fourth in the 2018 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. Conflicts in Libya and Mali, and more recently in Burkina Faso, and attacks by Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (Boko Haram) in Chad, the Niger and Nigeria have created security and humanitarian crises, resulting in population movements, including internally displaced person crises on the borders with Mali and Nigeria. 4 Faced with this fragile security context, the Niger devotes 15 per cent of its national budget to security. 5 6. In recent years, particularly after the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, the Niger has become a major transit country for migrants travelling north and to the Mediterranean.6 More recently, especially since 2014, the Niger has become a transit and destination country for migrant persons expelled from Algeria and those forced to return from Libya. These returns have put a lot of pressure on the Niger, which according to many interlocutors has become “a permanent transit centre” and “the southern border of Europe” as a result of migration policies adopted in the Niger and by third countries, with serious consequences for the human rights of migrants and raising questions as to the effectiveness and sustainability of such policies. III. Normative and institutional framework on migration and border management A. International legal framework 7. The Niger has ratified all the core international human rights treaties, including the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It has also ratified the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking in Persons Protocol). The Niger is also a State party to the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the Protocol thereto, and the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. It has also ratified all the fundamental International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, including the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182). Hence, the Niger has an obligation to translate its international obligations into national legislation, policies and practices. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Fransje Molenaar and Floor El Kamouni-Janssen, Turning the Tide: The Politics of Irregular Migration in the Sahel and Libya (The Hague, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael (Clingendael Institute), 2017), p. 2. National Institute of Statistics, census of 2012. The Niger ranked 189 in 2018. See http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/NER. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons reported 129,015 internally displaced persons in Diffa Region as at 31 October 2017 (A/HRC/38/39/Add.3, para. 17). Security spending claims a critical proportion of public expenditure in the Niger. See International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Niger: second review under the extended credit facility arrangement, and request for modification of a performance criterion”, IMF Country Report No. 18/166 (Washington, D.C., 2018). See also www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/531887/politique/le-niger-face-au-defi-du-cout-dela-securite/. Conservative estimates suggest that since 2000 some 100,000 migrants have passed through the Niger each year, with 2017 possibly forming a peak at 330,000 migrants. Fransje Molenaar, Irregular Migration and Human Smuggling Networks in Niger (The Hague, Clingendael Institute, 2017), p. 4. 3