Between 2014 and September 25, 2024, more than 30,000 people either died or went missing in the Western, Central and Eastern Mediterranean according to data by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Even with the numbers of missing and dead migrants increasing across major migration routes in Africa and Asia between 2022 and 2023, the Mediterranean is still by far the most dangerous region for refugees fleeing from conflict, persecution and economic hardship in their home countries.
This large number can be attributed to widespread migration movements in 2015 and 2016. Those two years alone were responsible for 30 percent of total migrant deaths and disappearances on this route between 2014 and 2022. The number of incidents occurring while crossing the Sahara Desert, which accumulated to 6,316 in the past ten years, is tangentially related to these movements as well. Deaths and disappearances connected to border crossings between the U.S. and Mexico amounted to 5,431 between 2014 and 2024.
These numbers, however, do not reflect the total and rather show the minimum estimate aggregated from cases reported by connected governments, media outlets and NGOs as well as surveys of migrants and, in some regions, field missions by the IOM itself.
The IOM's methodological scope encompasses "the deaths of migrants who die in transportation accidents, shipwrecks, violent attacks, or due to medical complications during their journeys. It also includes the number of corpses found at border crossings that are categorized as the bodies of migrants, on the basis of belongings and/or the characteristics of the death." Deaths in detention, refugee camps or housing, after deportation and of internally displaced people are excluded.
