Every icon here represents one migrant who died or disappeared crossing an international border in 2021.
You are scrolling through 5,895 migrants whose cases have been recorded.
Every icon here represents one migrant who died or disappeared crossing an international border in 2021.
You are scrolling through 5,895 migrants whose cases have been recorded.
The world has experienced a mass exodus of migrants fleeing war zones, violence and persecution in search of economic opportunity and safety, in the past decade. Their journeys are marked by hardships — such as shipwrecks, kidnappings and extortion — and their stories often go untold.
48,319 migrants have either died or disappeared worldwide while migrating toward an international destination, according to data collected by the Missing Migrants Project.
The database, published by nonprofit International Organization for Migration, is the only one of its kind, and was developed in the wake of 2013 shipwrecks off the coast of Italy, which killed more than 368 people migrating from the Middle East and North Africa.
The nonprofit collects and verifies information on deaths and disappearances across the world every day from national authorities, NGOs, media reports, and interviews with surviving migrants. It classifies every class based on the region it was recorded in, the international border it was recorded at, and the cause of the death.
An analysis of the data set found that most deaths were along the central Mediterranian route. This route is used be thousands of migrants who seek to enter the European Union through Libya by sea. In 2017, the European Union began funding Libyan coastguards to rescue migrants at sea, in addition to enacting measures to further reduce migration on this route.
As a result, the route has seen a fall in migrants since 2017.
Migrants may die in transportation accidents, shipwrecks, violent attacks, due to medical complications, or due to a combination of two or more of these reasons during their journeys.
In 2014, apprxoimately 750 migrants drowned off Malta, where a group of Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese migrants was reportedly ordered by traffickers to switch to a smaller vessel after setting out from the Egyptian port city of Damietta, according to the LA Times.
Each dot on the map represents an incident in which more than 100 people were killed.
The U.S.-Mexico border has the highest number of deaths related to unknown causes. Deaths documented on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014 make up the largest death toll on any single border crossing between two countries.
Out of the 7,972 deaths recorded with the cause "unknown or missing," 2,019 deaths have taken place in North America, making it the leading cause of migrant deaths in the continent.
The maritime journey to Greece, often undertaken on overcrowded rubber boats, is a key route — the number of people seeking to cross reached its peak between 2015 and 2016, when more than 1 million people passed through Greece in hopes of traveling on to other parts of the European Union, according to The Washington Post.
The number of migrants entering Europe has declined since 2016, in part because of anti-immigrant policies in some European countries. The coronavirus pandemic — which sparked lockdowns and tighter border rules worldwide — led to a drop in border crossings.
In recent months, however, deaths have once again begun to increase. On April 21, the Tunisian coast guard said four boats carrying 120 African migrants and refugees headed for Italy had sunk off the coast near the city of Sfax. The incident killed at least 17 migrants, while five remain missing. The boats were headed to the coast of Italy. 98 African refugees, who were conflict and poverty in Northern Africa and the Middle East, were rescued, according to Al Jazeera.
All data comes from the Missing Migrants Project. It is current as of May 1, 2022.
A “migrant” is defined as a person in the process of migration toward an international destination, regardless of their legal status.
The count excludes deaths that occur in immigration detention facilities or after deportation to a migrant’s homeland, as well as deaths more loosely connected with migrants’ irregular status, such as those resulting from labor exploitation.
The Missing Migrants Project gathers data from diverse sources such as official records – including from coast guards and medical examiners – and other sources such as media reports, NGOs, and surveys and interviews of migrants. As collecting information is challenging, all figures remain undercounted.
The “region of incident” comes from the Missing Migrants Project's classification, and is based on current migration patterns and contemporary common language usage.
A notebook containing data analysis behind every visualization in this project can be found here. The GitHub repository — which houses code for this project and the raw data that powers the maps and charts on this page — can be found here.
©Aadit Tambe | 2022