5,054 people have died at the Euro-African Western Border in the first 5 months of 2024, an average of 33 people per day.
Today, Wednesday 12 June 2024, the collective Ca-Minando Fronteras presents the appalling figures drawn from the monitoring of border victims from 1 January to 31 May this year. We have registered 5,054 dead or missing people, including 154 women and 50 children. This number is far higher than the one recorded at this time last year.
This alarming increase in fatality rates at the borders clearly shows the effects of policies that are more concerned with migration control than with defending the right to life. The data we have recorded in these five months, based on primary sources –migrant communities, family members, victims and social organisations on the ground–, are as follows:
— 5,054 dead or missing people.
— 33 victims on average per day.
— 47 boats disappeared with all the people on board.
— 154 women and 50 children died trying to reach the Spanish coast.
— Every month, there have been more than 800 victims.
The Atlantic route continues to be the deadliest with a total of 4,808 people dead –95% of all victims recorded during these first five months. Given the high lethality of this route, we have differentiated three main departure zones in the report:
— The coastal area between Guelmin and Dakhla, with 249 victims.
— The Senegal route, with 959 victims, where, according to our observations, departures are decreasing significantly.
— The Mauritanian route, the deadliest of them all, which has claimed 3,600 lives during this period.
Concerning the Mediterranean routes, these have claimed 246 victims, with the Algerian Western Mediterranean route being the second most deadly after the Atlantic one.
April was the most fatal month, with almost 1,200 victims, but during the entire recorded period the figures remained stable every month, with more than 800 deaths.
Among the causes of this notable increase are bilateral agreements that focus on migration control, but do not establish protocols for collaboration to reinforce search and rescue resources when alerts of boats in danger are issued. In addition, the routes have remained active even in bad weather conditions and using very precarious vessels.
Furthermore, the performance of rescue services is still very poor, with arbitrary practices and insufficient means, resorting to passive search methods.
‘We cannot normalise these figures and that is why we must demand that the different countries put the duty of rescue at sea protocols, and the defence of the right to life, above migration control measures. And it’s not that complicated, it’s just not letting people die at the borders and providing all the means to save the lives of people at risk’, demands Helena Maleno, coordinator of this research.
Download here our Monitoring Right to Life January – may 2024 in English and, at the bottom of the page, in Spanish and French.
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