Massive intrusions of African people via Melilla had become a Spanish issue and, to some extent, a European Union issue. This prompted the Spanish government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005 to build up a third fence next to the two deteriorated existing ones, in order to completely seal the border outside of the regular checkpoints. So far the new fence has succeeded in deterring new intrusions
and the sub-Saharan camp sites in the buffer zone have mostly disbanded. From these, Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières accused the Moroccan government of dumping people
from various African countries (some of them claiming to be validly registered as political refugees) in an uninhabited area of the Sahara Desert without food or water supplies
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