The International Organization for Migration´s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project has documented at least 5,684 deaths on migration routes to and within Europe since the beginning of 2021, with increasing numbers of deaths seen on routes across the Mediterranean, on land borders to Europe and within the continent.
At least 2,836 deaths and disappearances were documented on the Central Mediterranean route since 2021 (as of 24 October 2022), an increase compared to the 2,262 deaths recorded between 2019-2020, IOM reported on October 25.
On the West Africa-Atlantic route to the Spanish Canary Islands, 1,532 deaths were documented in the reporting period, a figure already higher than any two-year period since IOM began documenting deaths in 2014.
“On both of these long, hazardous overseas routes, data for the current year is highly likely to be incomplete given the labor-intensive process of verifying all-too-frequent ‘invisible shipwrecks’ – cases in which entire boats are lost at sea without any search and rescue being conducted,” IOM said.
Click here for the IOM report.
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