MERF Project Summary - Alert 08 Morocco (Essential needs for migrants)

The Migration Emergency Response Fund (MERF), funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), was established in January 2017 in partnership with the 15 member representatives of the Start Network present in the region. The MERF allows member organisations to react to a significant change of needs, or provide assistance to previously unidentified vulnerable groups. Its aim is to address the unpredictable nature of the mixed migration crisis across the Mediterranean that exacerbated an already difficult operating context for aid workers and made it difficult to plan for a response.

This intervention was designed to respond to two parallel dynamics progressively worsening the living conditions of migrants in Morocco over the summer period:

a) Due to favourable weather conditions facilitating sea crossing, the number of migrants gathering at the northern borders in the forests around Tangier and Nador increases over the summer and living conditions in camps became precarious;

b) Due to the combination of higher number of migrants and the aggressive ‘decongesting’ strategies implemented by national authorities, high number of regular and irregular migrants are pushed back to displacement cities in the Centre and South of the country.

A comprehensive response aimed at improving the living conditions and ability to access basic services of the most vulnerable migrant populations in border camps and displacement areas. This has had a substantial added value to the very limited capacity of the current response system to cover the increasing humanitarian needs of the migrant population in Morocco.