2023 marks deadliest year on migration routes worldwide, UN says
United Nations reports that 8,565 people died in 2023 while attempting to migrate, marking the most fatal year in the past decade
In a thrilling announcement on Wednesday, the United Nations disclosed that 8,565 individuals perished while traversing migration routes globally in 2023, marking the most fatal year on record in the past decade.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) of the UN emphasized the concerning 20 percent increase in deaths as compared to 2022 and the pressing need for preventative actions to avoid more deaths.
The highest number recorded in 2016, 8,084 deaths during migration, was surpassed by the figure from the previous year. Tragically, 512 deaths have already been documented in the early months of 2024.
According to the IOM, the continuous increase in fatalities was caused by the ongoing lack of safe and authorized routes for migration, which forced hundreds of thousands of people to travel at great risk via unofficial routes.
Primarily, the Mediterranean Sea is one of the most dangerous routes that many migrants choose in an attempt to go from northern Africa to southern Europe. The Mediterranean had the greatest death toll on this migratory route since 2017 in 2023, with at least 3,129 people losing their lives there.
A horrific event that is described is the June 14, 2023, sinking of the Adriana, an overloaded trawler off the coast of Greece, which claimed over 600 lives.
Africa and Asia suffered hitherto unheard-of levels of migrant mortality as a result of their migration. 1,866 people lost their lives in Africa, most of them either traveling over the dangerous Sahara Desert or the dangerous waters off the coast of Spain to reach the Canadian Islands. Amidst this, 2,138 lives were lost in Asia, mostly among refugees from Afghanistan and Rohingya.
With slightly more than half of all deaths in 2023 coming from drowning, it became the top cause of mortality. Moreover, automobile accidents caused nine percent of fatalities, and violence accounted for seven percent.
Deputy Director-General of the IOM Ugochi Daniels noted the deep human sorrow that underlies every lost life as she considered the somber 10-year anniversary of the Missing Migrants Project.
Source: AFP
