Migrants face ‘unimaginable horrors’ crossing Africa to reach Mediterranean, says UN
- Far more people are believed to be dying on land routes than at sea, says a report, with thousands of deaths each year
Refugees and migrants face extreme violence, abuse and exploitation on land routes crossing Africa to get to the Mediterranean, with far more believed to be dying there than at sea, a UN-backed report said Friday.
Nearly 30,000 migrants have been declared dead or missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past decade.
But it could be even worse for those travelling through Africa to the coast, according to a report from United Nations agencies for refugees and migrants and the monitoring group Mixed Migration Centre.
Based on more than 31,000 interviews with refugees and migrants, the report found that 1,180 people were known to have died while crossing the Sahara Desert between January 2020 and May 2024.
Five deaths a day are being recorded on the desert routes, taking the total to at least 870 so far this year, Laurence Hart of the UN’s International Organization for Migration told reporters in Geneva.
But these numbers are believed to be a vast underestimate.
