NEARLY 9,000 MIGRANTS DIED WORLDWIDE IN 2024, MARKING DEADLIEST YEAR ON RECORD

BRUSSELS • According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2024 was the deadliest year ever for migrants, with at least 8,938 recorded deaths. The true number is likely much higher, and disturbingly, over 10% of victims perished due to violence, particularly in Asia and Africa.

Brussels, March 21, 2025 – This is the grim reality behind stricter security measures, from Trump's deportations in the United States to Europe's bloody agreements with transit countries along major migration routes, and the violence at the borders between Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2024 was the most fatal year ever for migrants, with at least 8,938 victims on migration routes worldwide.

This toll confirms the dramatic trend of the past five years, with the number of deaths constantly increasing. It surpasses the previous record set in 2023, when the IOM's Missing Migrants Project recorded 8,747 migrant victims. Furthermore, as the UN organization's report emphasizes, the actual number of deaths and disappearances "is likely much higher," due to the scarcity of official sources and difficulties in obtaining reliable information in some countries.

"The tragedy of the growing number of migrant deaths worldwide is unacceptable and preventable. Behind every number is a human being," stressed Ugochi Daniels, IOM's Deputy Director General for Operations. 2024 was the deadliest year for migrants in most regions globally: 2,778 victims were recorded in Asia, 2,242 in Africa, and 233 in Europe – particularly in the Western Balkans, the Alps between Italy and France, and the English Channel. The Mediterranean Sea, where over 30,000 people have drowned in the last decade, once again became a graveyard for 2,452 migrants in 2024. This is fewer than the 3,155 deaths recorded in 2023, but more than the two preceding years. In the first three months of 2025, an estimated 365 people have already died attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

Violence a Leading Cause of Death

"The increase in deaths across so many regions of the world demonstrates that we need an international and holistic response that can prevent further tragic loss of life," Daniels added. Definitive data is not yet available for the American continent, but at least 1,233 deaths were recorded in 2024. This includes an unprecedented number in the Caribbean, where 341 people lost their lives, and at least 174 victims perished while crossing the Darién jungle, a region between Colombia and Panama that has become a mandatory stop for hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to reach the United States by land.

Another chilling truth emerges from the IOM's annual report: worldwide, migrants are predominantly dying because they are being killed. Since 2022, at least 10% of all recorded migrant deaths have been due to violence. According to Missing Migrants Project data, in 2024, this was largely attributable to killings on the route from South and Southeast Asia through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, to Turkey, where nearly 600 people lost their lives. Arbitrary violence against migrants is also increasing on the African continent, particularly in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea – Tunisia and Libya – from which thousands of sub-Saharan migrants try to sail to the Italian, Greek, and Maltese coasts.

Throughout 2024, various international media outlets, non-governmental organizations, and even the European Ombudsman and the EU Court of Auditors have highlighted the risk that these acts of violence and killings may be perpetrated with the support of substantial European funds that the Commission provides to Tunisian and Libyan security forces to block migrant flows.

Scrolling through the incidents recorded in the IOM report, victims can be counted up to just a few days ago. There were 70 missing in the waters between Mauritania, Morocco, and the Spanish Canary Islands on March 12. The bodies of 58 migrants were discovered on February 7 in two mass graves in Libya, in the Sahara desert, in the Al Kufrah district. And thousands more numbers that may never become names. If "the increase in deaths is terrible in itself, the fact that thousands of people remain unidentified each year is even more tragic," commented Julia Black, coordinator of the Missing Migrants Project.