Migrant deaths surge on most dangerous routes

Three of the world's most dangerous migration routes have seen a surge in deaths, figures show, as campaigners warn tough immigration policies are pushing desperate people towards riskier journeys.

- ALEX CROFT

The UN’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) has recorded 81,540 deaths worldwide since 2014, hitting a peak in 2024 when 9,197 refugees and asylum seekers died trying to reach another country for a better life.

Despite a small decline in fatalities in 2025, the first month of 2026 was the deadliest January since records began, with 713 lives lost.

The deadliest single path is the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Southern Europe, with at least 26,416 people killed over the last decade. At least 501 have died trying to make the journey in the first weeks of 2026 already.

Two other routes have seen a particular surge in recent years. Deaths of migrants travelling overland from Afghanistan to Iran have risen by 1,900 per cent between 2019 and 2025 (65 to 1,323), with a particular increase since the Taliban retook control in 2021. Lives lost between western Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands rose by 480 per cent during the same period (202 to 1,172).

["These routes] are some of the most dangerous in the world, and certainly the ones where we've seen the greatest increases over time," a spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which runs the MMP, told The Independent.

The organisation believes that tougher policies merely move the problem elsewhere. "We're seeing that, because the countersmuggling enforcement on a lot of the West and North African departure countries is getting stricter, people are leaving from as far south as the Gambia, an overseas journey of weeks, which is crazy when it's often a fishing boat," the spokesperson added.

Drowning during sea crossings is by far the leading cause of death (46,686), followed by transport accidents (7,188), lack of shelter, food or water (5,967), violent attacks (5,891) and illness (3,418).