An Amnesty International report accused European governments of being ‘knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants detained by Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions’. However, In the wake of the revelations of the Libyan slave trade, EU officials announced plans to team up with the African Union in a joint task force of police and intelligence agencies targeting human trafficking.

As a result of these measures, sub-Saharan migrants and refugees trying to cross North Africa have been forced to stay in Algeria, a trend that has fuelled anti-migrant sentiment and xenophobia among Algerians. In the spring of 2017, the controversial online campaign ‘No to Africans in Algeria’, which framed sub-Saharan migrants as a threat, went viral and heralded a significant political shift to the right.