By Dr. Haytham Ereifej
Jordan Daily - The images of large numbers of young Moroccans risking their lives by swimming toward the cities of Ceuta and Melilla should not be viewed merely as a border problem or an isolated attempt at irregular migration. They should be understood as an alarm bell sounding across the entire Arab world.
What drives a young person to leave behind their family and homeland and risk drowning, arrest, or deportation in search of an opportunity in a distant country? Why does the sea, despite all its dangers, appear less cruel than remaining at home?
The figures show that the desire to migrate is no longer an individual or exceptional phenomenon. United Nations reports indicate that the number of migrants and refugees originating from Arab countries reached approximately 37 million in 2024. Arab Barometer surveys also reveal that thoughts of migration are widespread among young people across many Arab countries, with some expressing a willingness to take irregular routes despite being fully aware of the dangers involved.
Economic hardship remains one of the main drivers. The International Labour Organization has estimated youth unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa at approximately 24.5 percent, nearly twice the global average. Yet even this figure reflects only part of the problem. Many young people are employed in low-paid, temporary, or informal jobs that do not match their education or qualifications and provide neither social security nor adequate protection.
Migration, however, is not caused by unemployment alone. Arab youth are not simply searching for higher salaries. They are searching for a state that respects their abilities, protects their dignity, guarantees equality before the law, and offers genuine opportunities for advancement free from favouritism, nepotism, and discrimination.
When young people feel that education and hard work are not enough to secure employment, that opportunities are distributed according to connections and influence, and that the law is not applied equally to everyone, migration is transformed in their minds from a personal choice into a means of survival.
International reports on the rule of law and human rights point to serious challenges across large parts of the Arab region. These include concerns regarding judicial independence, corruption, the protection of fundamental rights, freedom of expression and association, and the rights of religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities.
Human rights studies also highlight significant gaps between legal provisions and their implementation in practice. As a result, some citizens feel that their rights are not permanent guarantees but privileges that may vary according to their identity, social position, or political connections.
Arab countries cannot all be placed in the same category, nor can it be claimed that everyone considering migration is directly experiencing persecution or abuse. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny the connection between the growing desire to leave and declining trust in institutions, limited economic and political prospects, and a weakening sense of justice and equal opportunity.
The greatest contradiction lies in the populist rhetoric that attacks the West every morning, accusing it of moral decline, conspiracy, and hostility toward our values, while large numbers of our young people spend every evening dreaming of reaching it.
We criticise Western societies, yet we send our children to their universities, deposit our money in their banks, seek treatment in their hospitals, rely on their courts, and request residence and protection there whenever life becomes unbearable in our own countries.
Young people do not migrate because they hate their homelands. They migrate because they want a state that respects human dignity, rewards hard work, protects freedom, provides decent employment, and places the law above everyone.
Indeed, the young person most deeply attached to their country may be the one who suffers most when they discover that they are unable to build a future within it.
Walls, patrols, and punishments alone will not stop migration. They may delay it or force migrants to seek different routes, but they will not address its root causes.
Reducing irregular migration begins with creating decent employment opportunities, improving wages and social protection, combating corruption and favouritism, strengthening judicial independence, guaranteeing public freedoms, protecting minority rights, and restoring confidence that competence and hard work can still build a future at home.
Instead of blaming those who take to the sea, we must ask the more difficult question: Who made a young person at the beginning of their life believe that the possibility of drowning at sea is more merciful than continuing to live without work, justice, or hope?
