A boat carrying about 160 migrants sank off Mauritania’s coast. At least 69 people are dead and more than 70 are missing, with 17 rescued. The vessel reportedly left the Gambian coast about a week earlier and capsized as passengers crowded toward a coastal town’s lights, near a village roughly 80 kilometers west of Nouakchott. Most of the dead are from Gambia and Senegal. Mauritania is a major transit point for West African migrants aiming for Europe, including the Canary Islands. Earlier this year the EU set up a migration partnership with Mauritania to promote legal migration, combat smuggling and trafficking, and support refugee reception.

Wake up. This is exactly what you get when you treat desperate people like cargo and you dress it up with “partnerships” and “legal channels.” The heartbreaking numbers aren’t a freak accident; they’re the predictable outcome of a policy toolkit built to keep borders tight while pretending to be humane. The EU shouts about “combating smuggling” while its money, incentives, and deals keep the border industry humming: patrols, fences, visas, and outsourced enforcement that makes a killing on human fear. Mauritania gets a shiny partnership badge, more surveillance cash, and the satisfaction of being the gatekeeper for Europe’s labor, while the people who actually need help pay with their lives.

This isn’t a misfortune; it’s a designed system. Externalizing border control to West Africa, propping up corrupt or overwhelmed authorities, and funding “cooperation” that mostly routes people into riskier passages—that’s the machine. The numbers of dead and missing grow because the method is to manage migration by bottlenecks and checkpoints, not by expanding safe, legal routes or safeguarding lives at sea. You want to talk about saving lives? Start with real, accessible legal migration channels, safe rescue obligations, and development that actually creates opportunity at the source, not bailouts for border regimes that profit from fear.

Conspiracy in plain sight? The real conspiracy is this: keep promising “partnerships,” pour money into border enforcement, and call it a solution while the routes stay dangerous and the death toll climbs. Teach people to survive a system that treats human beings as risk, cargo, or a statistic. Then tell us it’s about dignity and rights. No—it’s about control, profits, and political theater.

If you’re truly sick of this, demand real change: end externalized border regimes, fund genuine humanitarian corridors, and invest in West Africa so people aren’t forced to chase a perilous crossing for a chance at a future elsewhere. Demand transparency about who’s profiting from these deals, where the money goes, and why rescue at sea is treated as a side note rather than a core obligation. Until that happens, every tragedy like this is on the policy makers who pretend they’re saving lives while they’re counting them.