Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Article 13:
“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.”
Yet today, the word migrant is often paired with the word irregular. Migration routes are becoming increasingly dangerous, as European policies aimed at curbing irregular migration push people towards ever more perilous journeys and actually feed human trafficking.
Between 2018 and 2024, while working as a photojournalist across the Sahel and the Maghreb, I met people who had survived human trafficking and ransom kidnappings, crossed the sea, or been repeatedly pushed back from Europe’s borders.
Alongside my reporting, I wrote my PhD on human trafficking for ransom in Libya, which was awarded Cum Laude.
This gallery brings together photographs taken along the way, across the desert and in Tunisia.
