By Renata Brito and Kerstin Sopke —
The Associated Press
More than a decade ago, the deaths of 600 migrants and refugees in two shipwrecks in the Mediterranean near the Italian coast shocked the world and prompted the UN migration agency to begin recording the number of people who died or went missing while They were fleeing conflict, persecution or poverty.
Governments around the world have repeatedly pledged to save the lives of migrants and fight traffickers while militarizing borders. However, ten years later, a report from the International Organization for Migration's Missing Migrants Project released Tuesday shows that the world is no safer for people on the move. On the contrary, immigrant deaths have skyrocketed.
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Since tracking began in 2014, more than 63,000 people have died or are missing and presumed dead, according to the Missing Migrants Project, with
2023 being the deadliest year so far.
“The figures are quite alarming,” Jorge Galindo, spokesperson for the Global Data Institute of the International Organization for Migration, IOM, told The Associated Press news agency. "We see that 10 years later, people are still losing their lives in search of a better life."
Migrants sit on the deck of the Belgian Navy ship Godetia after being saved in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya, Wednesday, June 24, 2015. Gregorio Borgia / AP
The report notes that the deaths are "probably only a fraction of the actual number of lives lost worldwide" due to difficulty in obtaining and verifying information. For example, on the Atlantic route from the west coast of Africa to the Canary Islands of Spain, entire ships are said to have been destroyed in what are known as “invisible shipwrecks.” Similarly, countless deaths in the Sahara Desert are believed to go unreported.
anonymous deaths
Even when deaths are recorded, more than two-thirds of the victims remain unidentified. This may be due to a lack of information and resources, or simply because identifying dead migrants is not considered a priority.
Experts have called the growing number of unidentified migrants around the world a crisis comparable to the mass casualties seen in times of war.
Behind every anonymous death is a family facing “the psychological, social, economic and legal impacts of unresolved disappearances,” a painful phenomenon known as “ambiguous loss,” according to the report.
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"Governments must work together with civil society to ensure that families left behind, without knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones, can have better access to the remains of those who have died," Galindo said.
Of the victims whose nationalities were known to IOM,
one in three died while fleeing countries in conflict.
Almost 60% of deaths recorded by the IOM in the last decade were related to drowning.
The Mediterranean Sea is the largest grave of migrants in the world,
with more than 28,000 deaths recorded in the last decade.
Thousands of drownings have also been recorded along the US-Mexico border, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Gulf of Aden and increasingly in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, where desperate Rohingya refugees board overcrowded boats. .
“Search and rescue capabilities must be strengthened to assist migrants at sea, in accordance with international law and the principle of humanity,” the report states.
Currently in the Mediterranean "the vast majority of search and rescue tasks are carried out by non-governmental organizations," Galindo stated.
Solidarity is exhausted
When the Missing Migrants Project began in 2014, European sentiment was more sympathetic to the plight of migrants and the Italian government had launched
Mare Nostrum
, a major search and rescue mission that saved thousands of lives.
But solidarity did not last, and European search and rescue missions were progressively scaled back for fear that they would encourage smugglers to dump even more people onto cheaper, deadlier ships. That's when NGOs intervened.
Their help has not always been well received. In Italy and Greece, they have faced increasing bureaucratic and legal obstacles.
Following the 2015-2016 migration crisis, the European Union began outsourcing border control and sea rescues to North African countries to “save lives” while preventing migrants from reaching European shores.
The controversial associations have been criticized by human rights advocates, particularly those in Libya. Libyan coast guards trained and funded by the European Union have been linked to human traffickers who exploit migrants who are intercepted and returned to squalid detention centers.
A UN-backed group of experts has found that abuses committed against migrants in the Mediterranean and in Libya may constitute crimes against humanity.
Despite increasing border walls and surveillance around the world, smugglers always seem to find lucrative alternatives, taking migrants and refugees along longer and more dangerous routes.
“There is an absence of safe migration options,” Galindo said. “And this has to change.”