Without jobs, their property gone, migrants from Sub-Saharan African countries – mainly from West and North Africa – camped outside the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR offices in Tunis, Tunisia, have struggled to feed themselves.

There is limited access to medical care and no ablution facilities. This new homeless sleep next to ever-growing piles of garbage ungathered by the city’s sanitation workers.

Some Tunisian citizens have rallied to help. Volunteers bring food, shelter material, water, hygiene products, and diapers for the children. Local associations are collecting donations to help keep that support going – although there have been reports that some groups have received online threats.

Only limited assistance has been delivered by UN humanitarian agencies. In a statement to The New Humanitarian, IOM said it was providing legal and psychological help to the most vulnerable and “emergency accommodation to migrants with a specific health/medical condition”.

UNHCR said it was working “closely with the government to promote a favourable protection environment for all refugees and asylum seekers”. But scared and frustrated, registered refugees The New Humanitarian spoke to said there was little evidence that was having any impact.

Saied’s anti-African migrant comments prompted international censure. The African Union said it amounted to “racialised hate speech”, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tunisia must stop “all forms of racial discrimination and racist violence”.

The World Bank also suspended a high-level meeting, key to agreeing a new support programme for the heavily indebted government. That has complicated Tunisia’s search for a $2 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Last month, Saied backpedalled, saying his position on immigration had been misinterpreted. On March 5, the government announced a list of new, albeit limited, measures to facilitate the legal residency of migrants.

Although the violence has subsided, the situation remains tense. A spokesperson for the Association of African Students and Interns in Tunisia, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said he was advising students “against staying in working-class districts where a lot of racist aggression has occurred”.

Most students “don’t take taxis to avoid public transport, don’t go out alone, and don’t hang around”, he added.

Anti-African sentiment – which also targets Black Tunisians, who make up 10-15 per cent of the population – is not new in Tunisia. Although the country was the first in North Africa and the Middle East region to pass a law criminalising racial discrimination in 2018, the Saeid-supporting Tunisian Nationalist Party has tapped into a vein of resentment and is campaigning for its repeal.

The party echoes the global far-right’s “great replacement” rhetoric, pushing a relentlessly bigoted message that portrays migrants as a threat.

The security establishment employs similar language, while commentators in mainstream media have defended the government’s determination to expel undocumented migrants as a necessary “law and order” measure.

The migrant crackdown is part of wider lurch into authoritarianism by Saied since he came to power in 2019. Two years later, he suspended parliament, dissolving it entirely in July 2022 to achieve near-total power in what has been described as a “self-coup”.

There has been a wave of arrests of political and civil society opponents who Saied describes as “enemies of Tunisia”. There have also been military trials of civilians, and restrictions on freedom of expression.

It comes as the country – once the Arab world’s only democracy – struggles with rising food and fuel prices, an unemployment rate of 15 per cent, and a $39 billion external debt. Fake viral videos have blamed those economic woes on sub-Saharan Africans.

The hardships are forcing increasing numbers of Tunisians to attempt the Mediterranean crossing to Europe. They are the second largest nationality among migrants arriving in Italy using the Central Mediterranean route – roughly 17 per cent of arrivals in 2022.

The country’s deep economic crisis – fuelled in part by the lingering impact of Covid-19 and rising grain prices due to the war in Ukraine – is seen by many commentators as one reason Saeid has seized on anti-migrant populism.

“Migrants and refugees are the easy targets of this scapegoating, which just incites racist violence,” Lauren Seibert, a refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.

European countries – which invested heavily in Tunisia’s democratic transition since the 2011 Arab Spring revolution – are worried by the country’s economic troubles, and fear further political turmoil.

Tunisia is also regarded as a key potential partner in regulating migration, and the European Commission is currently looking to iron out a “cash for migrant control” deal with Tunis.

Yet Saied’s actions may force more sub-Saharans and Tunisians to make the dangerous sea crossing seeking a better life, Lawyers without Borders (ASF), which provides legal aid to asylum seekers and migrants, has warned.

“Many, feeling unwelcome, are pushed to take more unsafe migrant journeys, putting their lives at even greater risk,” Zeineb Mrouki, an ASF project coordinator, points out.

“I want to be anywhere safe,” said Saddam Hammad, 29, a refugee from Sudan’s conflict-hit Darfur region, now sheltering on the pavement outside UNHCR’s office.

Hammad, who made it to Tunisia five months ago after surviving a harrowing journey through Libya and Algeria, added: “We’re scared here, people look at us as if we’re not human.”

• The Humanitarian Report