GENEVA (Reuters) – Last year was the deadliest on record for migrants, with nearly 9,000 people confirmed to have died on perilous routes that include crossing the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.
“The increase in deaths across so many regions in the world shows why we need an international, holistic response that can prevent further tragic loss of life,” International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General for Operations Ugochi Daniels said in a statement.
In 2024, at least 8,938 people died on migration routes, with Asian routes being the most deadly followed by the Mediterranean crossing and Africa, which includes the Sahara.
The IOM data goes back to at least 2014. Each year since 2021, the annual total of recorded migrant deaths has increased, with many thousands more thought to be unrecorded annually due to the lack of official records, IOM says.
The Geneva-based agency is one of several groups helping displaced people that have been hit by major aid cuts from the United States, forcing it to scale back or shutter programmes in moves it says will have a severe impact on migrants.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Ludwig Burger)
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