Lorraine Williamson
NGO Caminando Fronteras announced earlier this week that 6,618 migrants had died while trying to reach the Spanish coast. This is a huge increase compared to last year when 2,390 deaths were recorded.
This makes 2023 the deadliest year since records have been kept. The actual figures are even higher. Most of the victims, 6,007, died on the route along the Canary Islands.
This is stated in a 2023 report by the organisation Caminando Fronteras, which analyses the different migration routes along the Euro-African western border, a sea and land border between the Spanish state and the coastal strip from southern Senegal to Algeria.
Actual figures are higher, according to Caminando Fronteras
The report shows that of the 6,618 migrants who died on these routes in 2023, 363 were women and 384 were children. The report also mentions that a total of 84 boats disappeared with all the people on board.
“Despite these terrible numbers, we know that there are even more,” warned the research coordinator, Helena Maleno, at a press conference where she presented the results.
Migration Control Policy
She also blames this increase in mortality on migration control policies in which “border control is given priority” over “the right to life” and the fact that “dereliction of the duty to help is established as a practice”.
Specifically, Maleno denounced the fact that “search and rescue tools are not activated” or that this is happening “too late.”
IOM shows different figures
On Wednesday, the International Organisation for Migration announced that 3,711 migrants across the European Union had died while trying to reach an EU country illegally.
Also read the article ‘More than fifty thousand immigrants reaches Spain in 2023’