Between January and May this year, almost 33 deaths per day, one migrant every 45 minutes, 5,504 migrants in total, died trying to reach Spain by making the treacherous sea crossing. This was revealed on Wednesday by a report from a Spanish NGO.
Citing UN and EU data, the NGO’s report, “Monitoring the Right to Life on the Western Euro-African Border,” highlights that the majority of migrant deaths occur on the world’s most dangerous route between the coast West Africa and the Canary Islands, where 4,808 deaths were recorded in the same period.
In comparison, 175 deaths were recorded on the Algerian route (from Algeria to the Balearic Islands and the east coast of Spain), 47 in the Alboran Sea and 24 in the Strait of Gibraltar, warned the Spanish NGO Walking Borders, cited by EFE , partner of Euractiv.
With these figures adding up to a total of 5,504 deaths at sea across all migration routes, this means that 2024 could surpass the number of deaths in 2023, when 6,007 deaths at sea were recorded for all of 2023.
Another sign of the danger of the Canary Route is the large number of tramps that disappear into the Atlantic Ocean after leaving the coast of Mauritania, warns the NGO.
One such humanitarian tragedy was reported in the Spanish press on April 15, when rescue services found one such vessel on the northern coast of Brazil with nine bodies on board.
According to the NGO, most of the people who died in the Atlantic this year were on 3,600 boats that left from Nouakchott, Mauritania’s capital, Nouadhibou, the second largest city, or from other points along the Mauritanian coast.
Another 959 died in shipwrecks of boats coming from Senegal or Gambia, and another 249 in “patare” leaving from the Sahara and Morocco along the almost 1,000 kilometer stretch of coast between Guelmim and Dakhla.
“In previous years a reduction in boat departures could be observed (in winter), but in these (winter) months it was maintained even in the worst weather conditions,” the NGO said in its report.
In some cases, however, the deployment of relief resources is delayed or coordination between EU member states fails because authorities prioritize “migration control” over saving lives, the report adds.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
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