The deadliest migrant routes on the earth the place deaths have surged | EUROtoday

Three of the world’s most harmful migration routes have seen a surge in deaths, figures present, as campaigners warn robust immigration insurance policies are pushing determined folks in the direction of riskier journeys.

The UN’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) has recorded 81,540 deaths worldwide since 2014, hitting a peak in 2024 when 9,197 refugees and asylum-seekers died making an attempt to achieve one other nation for a greater life.

Despite a small decline in fatalities in 2025, the primary month of 2026 was the deadliest January since data started, with 713 lives misplaced.

The deadliest single path is the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Southern Europe, with a minimum of 26,416 folks killed during the last decade. At least 501 have died making an attempt to make the journey within the first weeks of 2026 already.

Two different routes have seen a specific surge lately. Deaths of migrants travelling overland from Afghanistan to Iran have risen by 1,900 per cent between 2019 and 2025 (65 to 1,323), with a specific enhance for the reason that Taliban retook management in 2021.

Lives misplaced between western Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands rose by 480 per cent throughout the identical interval (202 to 1,172).

[“These routes] are some of the most dangerous in the world, and certainly the ones where we’ve seen the greatest increases over time”, a spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which runs the MMP, informed The Independent.

The organisation believes that harder insurance policies merely transfer the issue elsewhere.

“We’re seeing that, because the counter-smuggling enforcement on a lot of the West and North African departure countries is getting stricter, people are leaving from as far south as the Gambia, an overseas journey of weeks, which is crazy when it’s often a fishing boat,” the spokesperson added.

Drowning throughout sea crossings is by far the main reason behind dying (46,686), adopted by transport accidents (7,188), lack of shelter, meals or water (5,967), violent assaults (5,891) and sickness (3,418).

European governments who’ve launched strict insurance policies to discourage migrants declare that is the important thing to tackling the problem.

Downing Street insists its stringent set of asylum measure introduced in November, will “dismantle the criminal networks profiting from human misery” whereas Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has stated that “crushing the traffickers’ business” is one of the best methodology for lowering deaths.

However, whereas the Central Mediterranean route noticed a gradual fall in deaths in 2024 and 2025, campaigners warn that harder migration insurance policies are driving determined migrants in the direction of extra distant routes, into the palms of prison smugglers in areas with little humanitarian presence and the place deaths are much less properly documented.

“The more you restrict border crossings, the more people use more remote routes,” she stated. “If you’re already breaking the law, you’re more likely to engage with criminal actors. This really is putting people’s lives at risk.”

A spike in deaths in 2026 has seen 567 migrants killed throughout all three Mediterranean routes, together with the jap route from Turkey to Greece and the western route from North Africa to Spain.

The second closest 12 months was 2015, when there have been 427 deaths. IOM information exhibits that there have been round 3,500 arrivals by sea in Italy in 2015, in comparison with lower than 1,500 in January 2026 – which suggests the speed of deaths per crossing has elevated.

On 6 February, 53 folks died when a migrant boat capsized close to the Libyan coast. Weeks earlier, Italian authorities estimated that 380 folks could have drowned in a single week whereas making an attempt to make the crossing as Cyclone Harry was battering southern Italy and Malta.

Amnesty UK’s refugee and migrants’ rights programme director, Steve Valdez-Symonds, informed The Independent that migration crackdowns have solely elevated the dependence of individuals on smugglers.

“Unworkable” deterrence insurance policies will solely trigger extra hurt, he added, with campaigners arguing they don’t cease folks making an attempt.

Greece is a working example, says Lora Pappa, president of Greek NGO Metadrasi. Last July, Athens quickly banned asylum entry for arrivals from North Africa.

But boat arrivals, which averaged at 3,182 through the first six months of 2025, jumped to a median of 4,058 through the ban.

“They stopped giving asylum… for people who are coming from Libya to create for three months. Did these people stop coming? No. They will take any risk,” Ms Pappa stated. “I don’t think we can stop this kind of movement of people without being inhuman.”

In the UK, the government is introducing new deterrent measures that include 20 year waits for indefinite leave to remain, restrictions on benefits and family members coming to join people already here.

Despite this, more than 41,470 people crossed the channel in 2025, the second highest since data collection began in 2018.

Labour party backbenchers have accused the government of “shamefully ripping up the rights and protections of people who have endured unimaginable trauma” with its harder stance.

Veteran MP Diane Abbott, who beforehand criticised the federal government for not doing sufficient to deal with the “anti-migrant drift” in world debate on migration, informed The Independent a special strategy is required.

In response to the dying figures, she argued the excessive quantity is “a consequence of dehumanising migrants, so nobody really cares whether they drown”.

“Governments need to make it easier for migrants to get here,” she argued. “People are desperate and they are going to risk their lives.”

If something, the MMP believes its figures on migrant deaths are a big underestimate, warning that massive cuts to help budgets which have restricted the group’s presence in hard-to-reach areas might make correct reporting much more of a problem.

“Documenting irregular migration is really hard,” the MMP spokesperson stated. “Bodies in remote areas may take days, weeks, months or never be found at all.

“There are a lot of what we call ‘invisible shipwrecks’, where we have no trace of what happened. We’ve had cases where whole boats of mummified remains are washing up in Brazil across the Atlantic.”

Ruvendrini Menikdiwela, the UNHCR’s assistant excessive commissioner for cover, informed The Independent the figures had been a “huge and growing concern”.

“We know that refugees and migrants continue to resort to dangerous journeys, often moving together,” she stated.

“We urge states and partners to provide prompt search and rescue, to uphold their asylum commitments, to provide opportunities for refugees to rebuild their life in new countries, and facilitate the prompt return for those not in need of international protection.

“But we must also help people find safety and life-saving assistance closer to home, where – contrary to the perceptions of many – most refugees stay.”