Almost 29,000 migrants dies trying to reach Europe

• More than 29,000 individuals had died travelling to Europe since 2019, with 5,000 of those deaths occurring in the previous two years.
• “Increasing numbers of deaths seen on routes across the Mediterranean, on land borders to Europe, and within the continent.”
• The Central Mediterranean remains the deadliest migration route, where 2,836 migrants and refugees have perished.

More than 29,000 individuals had died travelling to Europe since 2019, with 5,000 of those deaths occurring in the previous two years.  The International Organization for Migration stated this in a study released on Tuesday.

“Increasing numbers of deaths seen on routes across the Mediterranean, on land borders to Europe, and within the continent,” the Missing Migrants Project of the UN agency warned.

According to its research, the Central Mediterranean remains the deadliest migration route, where 2,836 migrants and refugees have perished since January 2021 while trying to cross, primarily from Libya and Tunisia, to reach Italy or Malta.

The Atlantic route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, where more than 1,500 fatalities have been documented since 2021, is the second deadliest.

However, given the difficulty in gathering and verifying data on “invisible shipwrecks,” or boats that disappear at sea without witnesses, the project’s experts conceded that their total was probably an underestimate.

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According to the survey, rising fatality rates were also seen in other regions bordering Europe, including Greece, the Western Balkans, and the English Channel.

The Missing Migrants Project of the IOM stated in a statement that many of the fatalities “might have been averted by quick and effective support to migrants in distress.”

The initiative published figures on fatalities associated with so-called pushbacks, or forced expulsions, by European authorities for the first time. Based on accounts from survivors, 252 deaths were recorded.

Pushbacks are illegal under both international and EU law because they infringe on people’s rights to seek refuge and the rule that no one should be sent back to a location where they would be at serious danger of being persecuted, tortured, or facing threats to their lives.

According to the research, 97 deaths associated with pushback were recorded in the Central Mediterranean, 70 in the Eastern Mediterranean, 58 on the land border between Turkey and Greece, 23 in the Western Mediterranean, and 4 on the border between Belarus and Poland.

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