Immigration. IOM over 3,000 died in 2020

• Migrants, arrivals to the Canary Islands and through the Balkans doubled in October

• Migrants: nine, including minors, found in refrigerated trucks

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December 18, 2020

Over 3,100 people lost their lives in 2020 on migration routes around the world.

Until yesterday, the IOM project, Missing Migrants of the international organization for migration, recorded 3,174 deaths on migration routes around the world this year, down from 5,327 in 2019.

The decrease in the number of deaths on dangerous migration routes "is not" necessarily an indication that the number of lives lost has truly decreased in 2020 because Covid-19 also complicates our ability to collect data on deaths during migration and to monitor specific routes ", underlines the IOM in Geneva on the occasion of the international day of migrants.

So far in 2020, at least 1,773 migrants have died on routes within and to Europe, making up the majority of registered victims in the world, less than last year, but for some routes, IOM reports an increase in casualties.

593 migrants died on their way to Spain's Canary Islands.

In 2019 there were 210 deaths, 45 in 2018.

An increase in deaths is also recorded in South America, with at least 104 victims, most of them Venezuelan migrants, compared to 40 in all previous years.

IOM finally remembers the ghost shipwrecks, tragedies for which there is insufficient evidence.

The Missing Migrants project is aware of at least 14 invisible shipwrecks that would have claimed around 600 lives but were not included in this year's data.

On the occasion of the international day of migrants, the IOM stresses that despite the travel and mobility restrictions linked to Covid-19, tens of thousands of people in desperate situations continue to undertake dangerous journeys through deserts, jungles and seas , and thousands die along the way. "