Over 72,000 migrants dead, disappeared globally since 2014: UN

GENEVA: More than 72,000 deaths and disappearances have been documented along migration routes around the world in the past decade, most of them in crisis-affected countries, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Last year saw the highest migrant death toll on record, with at least 8,938 people dying on migration routes, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“These numbers are a tragic reminder that people risk their lives when insecurity, lack of opportunity, and other pressures leave them with no safe or viable options at home,” IOM chief Amy Pope said in a statement.

The report by her UN agency found that nearly three-quarters of all migrant deaths and disappearances recorded globally since 2014 occurred as people fled insecurity, conflict, disaster and other humanitarian crises.

One in four were “from countries affected by humanitarian crises, with the deaths of thousands of Afghans, Rohingya, and Syrians documented on migration routes worldwide”, said the IOM’s Missing Migrants Report.

The report said that more than 52,000 people died while trying to escape from one of the 40 countries in the world where the UN has a crisis response plan or humanitarian response plan in place.

Pope urged international investment “to create stability and opportunity within communities, so that migration is a choice, not a necessity”.

“And when staying is no longer possible, we must work together to enable safe, legal, and orderly pathways that protect lives.”

The Central Mediterranean remains the deadliest migration route in the world, with nearly 25,000 people lost at sea in the past decade, IOM said.

More than 12,000 of those had been lost at sea after departing from war-torn Libya, with countless others disappearing while transiting the Sahara Desert, the report said.

More than 5,000 people died while trying to leave crisis-ravaged Afghanistan in the past decade, many of them since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

And more than 3,100 members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority had died during the period, many in shipwrecks or while crossing into Bangladesh.

“Too often, migrants fall through the cracks,” warned Julia Black, coordinator of IOM’s Missing Migrants Project and author of the report.

“And due to data gaps - especially in war zones and disaster areas - the true death toll is likely far higher than what we’ve recorded,” she said in the statement.