Rights to life during migration in and from West Africa: the role of policies and narrative frames

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how policies on migration in West Africa and from the region to Europe address and frame migrants’ deaths and right to life in general and actions recommended in objective 8 of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in particular. The paper is based on an analysis of West African national, as well as African and (West) African-European transnational policy and strategy documents. It finds that while the adoption of GCM objective 8 has contributed to slightly increase policy attention to migrants’ deaths and right to life, narrative frames have been key for the justification of how the six actions recommended in the objective have been addressed and implemented at the national, regional, and transregional levels. African policy documents supporting human right-oriented narrative frames have tended to include more comprehensive provisions, and European Union-(West) African policy documents supporting deterrence-oriented frames have tended to include less provisions.