On August 24 a cruise liner docked in the Sicilian port of Trapani. It was not, however, one of the many ordinary vessels that typically call during the summer tourist season. Rather, it was what is known as a quarantine ship, carrying 603 migrants who had been transferred from the nearby island of Lampedusa. 

Among the passengers was 17-year-old Ahmedou. His story had begun more than a year before in Burkina Faso, a landlocked West African country that has, for decades, suffered repeated droughts, famines and military coups. Since 2015, it has also experienced a surge in Islamist violence that has left hundreds of people dead and up to one million more displaced.  

During a telephone call from a Sicilian migrant shelter, Ahmedou described a journey, taking in Niger and Libya, where he was held in what he referred to as “connection houses” used by trafficking gangs and forced to work long hours on a farm to pay for his stay. Then, finally, came a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea — waters in which more than 575 migrants have died in 2020, according to United Nations statistics.

 “There was a lot of conflict in Libya,” he said. “We didn’t have any money and there wasn’t any work. So it was better to come here, even though I knew it was dangerous. The same day that we got on the boat, there were people who died at sea, but we had to go anyway.”