Criminal offences in Niger
As a migrant, in transit in Niger, you should know that there are several laws and legal instruments that guarantee you rights.
In this article we accompany you through all these legal instruments to understand your rights during your stay in Niger
What is an offence?
An offence is a conduct strictly prohibited by criminal law and punishable by a penalty provided by the same criminal law. Niger has a set of legal texts defining the offences and penalties that are applicable called the Penal Code.
The offences in Niger are divided into:
- Contravention: an offence that is generally punishable only by a simple fine. Example: "violation of a traffic light that is punishable by a police ticket. »
- Offence: an unlawful (illegal) act punishable by law. Example: "blows and intentional injuries, simple theft. »
- Crime: serious transgression, prejudicial to order and safety, which is contrary to accepted social values, reprobated by conscience, and punished by law. Example: "murder, rape".
Some criminal offences provided for and punished in Niger
- Theft: is the fraudulent subtraction of something belonging to another person, that is to say, the fact of fraudulently seizing something that belongs to someone else. Theft is punishable by a prison term of 2 to 7 years and a fine of 10,000 to 150,000 CFA francs (article 306 of the Penal Code).
- Fraud: Deception consisting in obtaining property or providing a service through the use of a false name, false quality, abuse of quality or fraudulent practices. (Article 333 of the Penal Code)
- Breach of trust: which is the fact that a person to whom money or property has been given, to misappropriate the use of this property for his own benefit or for fraudulent use (Article338 of the Penal Code).
- Possession, consumption, and trafficking of narcotics: narcotic drugs are all psychotropic substances classified by or pursuant to international conventions, their preparations and any other plants and substances dangerous to public health because of the harmful effects that their abuse is likely to produce. The consumption of and trafficking in its substances is punishable under criminal law.
- Assault and battery: violence intentionally inflicted on a victim, i.e. the perpetrator deliberately sought to injure his victim, even if the act was not premeditated.
"Any person who willfully injures, assaults or commits any other violence or assault shall be punished by a term of imprisonment of three months to two years and a fine of 10,000 to 100,000 CFA francs or by one of these two penalties only" (article 222 of the Penal Code).
In the case of offences, can the migrant also be subjected to the rigour of the law?
In the same way that he fully enjoys his civil, social, cultural, political rights, etc., in the same way, in the event of offences, a migrant is punished as persons of Nigerien nationality in accordance with the provisions of the law.
Other forms of punishable offences aimed primarily at protecting the rights of migrants include:
- Smuggling of migrants
Any person who intentionally and for the purpose of deriving, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, procures the unlawful entry into a State Party of a person who is not a national or permanent resident of that State, commits a punishable offense.
A person who causes an unauthorized migrant to enter Niger or in any other State is liable to punishment if he or she does so for material benefit and knows that the person is an unauthorized migrant or is reckless in that regard.
- Offences relating to travel or identity documents
Any person who intentionally and for the purpose of deriving, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, manufactures, procures, provides or possesses a fraudulent travel or identity document in order to enable the smuggling of migrants, commits a punishable offense.
- Permitting illegal residence
Any person who intentionally and in order to derive, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, uses unlawful means to enable a person who is neither a national nor a permanent resident to remain in the State, without satisfying the conditions necessary for lawful residence in that State, is guilty of an offence punishable by law.
- Complicity
Any person who is an accomplice to an offence as mentioned above and when this involves the production of a fraudulent travel or identity document shall be liable to punishment.
For any questions:
- Contact us on our Facebook page Sheega.info from Monday to Thursday from 8am to 5.45pm and fridays from 8am to 1pm.
- You can also call us at these same times on our toll-free numbers 92 90 55 55 or 98 31 38 24