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Libyan Ministry of Justice employees at a site suspected of being a mass grave (photo from 2020)
Photo: Hazem Ahmed / dpa
The migration route from the Sahel to North Africa is one of the most dangerous in the world. People are dying again and again in the Sahara, and others are falling into the hands of smugglers and militias in Libya, for example. According to a statement from the United Nations Organization for Migration (IOM), a mass grave containing the bodies of 65 migrants has now been found in southwest Libya.
The circumstances of death and the nationalities of the dead in the mass grave in the southwest of the country are still unclear. "But it is believed that they died while smuggling through the desert," it said. "Every news story about a missing migrant or the loss of a life means a grieving family looking for answers."
The IOM supports migrants in need in Libya. She called for new efforts by all countries to curb irregular migration. This requires coordinated action against people smugglers and legal migration routes.
The body discovery highlights the "urgent need" to respond to the smuggling of people with a "coordinated response." "Without regular routes that offer opportunities for legal migration, such tragedies will remain a feature of this route," said the organization.
According to the “Missing Migrants Project,” which attempts to document deaths on global refugee routes, more than 23,000 migrants have died in the “Middle Africa” region and on the further refugee route across the central Mediterranean to Europe since 2014. The actual number is likely to be much higher. For example, the bodies of many refugees who drown in the Mediterranean are never found.
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