The number of deaths recorded on migratory routes fell this year, although COVID-19 difficulties and so-called “invisible shipwrecks” mean the real number is probably much higher, officials at the United Nations migration agency said.
The International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project showed 3,174 deaths compared with 5,327 in 2019.
“People continue to lose their lives on irregular migration journeys despite the extensive travel restrictions in 2020, showing the need for more safe, legal migration options,” Frank Laczko, director of IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, which hosts the Missing Migrants Project, said on Friday.
“Behind every one of these figures is a life lost needlessly, and a family who must mourn the person lost.”