London, Europe Brief News – The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) revealed that More than 3,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers died or went missing in 2021 while trying to reach Europe via Mediterranean and Atlantic sea routes.
UNHCR’s Shabia Mantoo told a news briefing in Geneva on Friday that the figure for 2021, a year in which Europe hardened its borders as new refugee crises flared, represented nearly twice the number of lives lost in the previous year.
UNHCR began releasing consolidated tolls in 2019 and the number of lives lost has risen each year since.
“We are seeing the increases soar,” Mantoo said. “It’s alarming.”
Of the 2021 total, 1,924 people were reported dead or missing on the Central and Western Mediterranean routes, according to UNHCR’s report. An additional 1,153 were reported dead or missing on the Northwest African maritime route to the Canary Islands.
“Most of the sea crossings took place in packed, unseaworthy, inflatable boats – many of which capsised or were deflated leading to the loss of life,” the agency said.
The dead and missing came from various North and sub-Saharan African countries including Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Eritrea, Egypt, Ivory Coast and Senegal, as well as Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, Mantoo said.
The tolls do not include those lost along land routes such as through the punishing Sahara Desert nor those lost in smuggler-run detention centres where survivors have reported sexual violence and forced marriage and labour.
