- The United Nations migration agency said more than 8,500 migrants died on land and sea routes around the world last year.
- The figure is the highest ever since the agency began counting deaths 10 years ago.
- Officials say the Mediterranean crossing has seen the biggest increase in migrant deaths.
The United Nations migration agency said Wednesday that a total of 8,565 migrants died on land and sea routes around the world last year, the highest number since it began keeping track of deaths a decade ago.
The International Organization for Migration said last year’s most deadly increase was in dangerous Mediterranean crossings, with 3,129 people killed, up from 2,411 in 2022. However, this is significantly lower than the record high death toll of 5,136 people recorded in 2016 due to the Syrian mass outbreak in the Mediterranean Sea. Afghans and others fled the conflict and headed to Europe.
The IOM announced that the total number of migrant deaths in 2023 was nearly 20% higher than in 2022.
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It was announced that most of the deaths last year (approximately 3,700 people) were due to drowning.
A dinghy lies on the shore after a shipwreck in which two migrants were killed and eight others were rescued, Wednesday, January 10, 2023, on the Aegean island of Thermi, northeast of the Greek island of Lesbos. The UN migration agency reported on Wednesday that two migrants had died and eight had been rescued. The number of people who died on land and sea routes around the world last year was the highest since death tolls began being tallied 10 years ago. The International Organization for Migration says the biggest increase in deaths last year was due to the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. (AP Photo/Panagiotis Balaskas, File)
The Geneva-based migration agency warned that the figure was likely an underestimate of the true number of victims and that improvements in data collection methods were affecting the calculations.
“Each is a horrific human tragedy that will reverberate for families and communities for years to come,” IOM Deputy Director-General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement.
Overall, Asia has seen the biggest increase in deaths in recent years, with more than 2,000 migrants killed per year, compared to an average of less than 1,000 per year since 2014. According to the IOM, 2,138 migrants died in Asia last year, 68 more than in 2022.
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The rise in deaths in Asia last year was mainly due to an increase in the deaths of Afghans fleeing to neighboring countries such as Iran and Rohingya refugees on sea routes, IOM spokesman Jorge Galindo said in an email. .
The IOM said a record 1,866 deaths also occurred in Africa last year, most of them along the sea route to the Sahara Desert and the Canary Islands.
The agency cited the difficulty of collecting data in remote locations, such as Panama’s dangerous Darién Gap, which many migrants pass through on their way north from South America.
IOM’s Missing Migrants project, which compiles the numbers, was established in 2014 in response to a spike in deaths in the Mediterranean and an influx of migrants to the Italian island of Lampedusa off the coast of Tunisia.
