Every day, young Africans out of sheer desperation endanger their lives in their quest to cross the Sahara desert and Mediterranean Sea for a better life in Europe. More than 20,000 have drowned in the past seven years while many more are even believed by experts to have perished in the desert. The main factor pushing young people to leave their homelands is lack of opportunities, the result of bad governance and political leadership failure in African countries. An organisation in Germany has now formally petitioned the International Criminal Court in The Hague to try African governments for their culpability in the tragedy.