CPOY

CPOY 75 International Picture Story Award of Excellence: Prison is a Way Out of Poverty

Like other young men Bangis has dreams for his future. But in the least developed country in the world the way from dream to reality is hard to pave. Bangis has comitted a crime and therefore he is prisoned in Agadez, Niger. But where prison often is a dead end, the criminal teenager has chosen a new path for his life by being part of a rehabilitation project in the Prison Civile d’Agadez. He is taught a craft with the aim of being independent upon release. With the reality on the other side of the prison wall sometimes being rougher than the one they are facing inside the prison, it is paramount to find employment. The point of the rehabilitation project is to prevent migration by helping the juvenile delinquents to open their own shop in Agadez - a city in crisis with no rightful employment found.

Caption
Slide 2 of 8
October 11, 2019
The population of Agadez is 88.000. The crisis of Agadez is mainly caused by the EU-supported criminalisation of the migrant industry in 2016. Being placed in central Sahara, Agadez played a central role in the migration to Libia and further for all of the West African migrants. Most locals earned their living off migration in one way or another. Local authorities claim that with the criminalization of the migrant industry, the work of around 7.000 people was made illegal, and other crimes increased. The criminalisation primarily affected young men and some are now inmates in the local prison. Bangs is one of them.
    d7477176-3a69-4485-9aed-2181181bd4ac
    c36d5840-38bc-4082-a38e-bb09822edcb9
    bc7eea87-7818-485b-8f8d-99366ea2772b
    442d3ada-010b-45b7-9201-8457b47139cf
    8ee7b275-d20f-4c8f-adfc-c5d1f4ae0437
    ed05da41-6df3-406a-a42a-05693a35a4f0
    54d7ede8-5838-4006-a750-dc4c533c07fb
    ffd87740-8411-45a4-a2ae-ea1415444b8b
    See more at cpoy.org