GENEVA, FEBRUARY 5 – IOM, the UN Migration Agency, reports that 6,413 migrants and refugees have entered Europe by sea through the first 34 days of 2019, a 17 percent decrease from the 7,499 arriving during the same period last year. However almost all of that decrease is attributed to the virtual disappearance of new arrivals to Italy, where only 202 people have arrived in 2019, compared with 4,723 through these same days in 2018. Spain’s arrivals this year are already more than triple those of 2018’s at this time. Arrivals to Greece also are about 33 percent higher than at this time last year (see chart below)
Deaths on the three main Mediterranean Sea routes through almost five weeks of the new year are at 208 individuals, compared with 391 deaths during the same period in 2018. (See chart 1).
Missing Migrants Project
2019 is the fifth year of IOM efforts to systematically record deaths on migration routes worldwide through its Missing Migrants Project. So far in 2019, Missing Migrants Project has recorded 354 people who have died during migration. This includes 125 people who have drowned in the past week while trying to migrate in four different parts of the world: Gulf of Aden, Colombia-Panama border, the US-Mexico border and the Caribbean.
Missing Migrants Project data are compiled by IOM staff based at its Global Migration Data Analysis Centre but come from a variety of sources, some of which are unofficial. To learn more about how data on migrant deaths and disappearances are collected, click here. For latest arrivals and fatalities in the Mediterranean, click here. Learn more about the Missing Migrants Project. (@OnuItalia)
