“The most important thing for me was to meet someone who told about his experience of travelling with smugglers.” At an event in Hargeisa young Somali victims of human smuggling tell their peers about their experience. Watch the story!

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“They think that as soon as they arrive here, they will get a well-paid job and be able to support their families. But it’s difficult to get a job and there’s a long process to go through before you can stand on your own feet.”Daniel speaks about the cultural shock asylum seekers experience when they arrive in the country of asylum and realize that nothing is what they had expected. 

Originally from Mogadishu, Halima has been through a great deal during her journey to Europe. And despite her eventual arrival there, the last seven years have seen her traveling between different countries seeking asylum without any success.

At home in Nigeria, Caroline worked as house help. She had grown up an orphan, but after a fight in the village, she fled what little family remained to her. In town, she met a man who told her his sister had a supermarket in Europe and could arrange a good job for her there.

Kiros and his wife Adiam met in a refugee camp for Eritreans in Ethiopia, got married and started a family. Because of the lack of job opportunities in the camp, they moved to Sudan, where they hoped to be able to earn a living. That proved to be very difficult, and Kiros decided to go to South Sudan, where he stayed working for a year. When he returned to Khartoum, his family had left to go to Europe via Libya. Their situation in Sudan had become unbearable and Adiam had not been able to contact her husband. He now had no idea where they were but decided to follow them to Europe.

“Some friends of mine had travelled with smugglers. They told us they had a nice life over there. That’s what made me forget my sweet life, forget my beloved mother, also forget my beloved family, that’s why I left.”

Abdirahman thought he would easily get to Europe through Libya but his dreams were brutally crushed.

Awet was traveling through the Libyan desert when they heard that fellow Eritreans had been caught by ISIS (Daesh) and killed. It was a dreadful situation because he had taken a group of Eritrean teenagers under his protection.