The Mediterranean Route – A Dangerous Journey

13-06-2022

Manon Picard

International Justice and Human Rights Researcher, 

Global Human Rights Defence.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) published, on the 10th of June 2022, the latest figures on the migration movement in the Mediterranean Sea in its Report entitled “No End in Sight”. The Report reveals that migrants who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe are now at a greater risk of dying during their journey. 

The UNHCR announced that in the “first quarter of 2022, more than 18,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe” and 2.3 million have taken the same journey since 2014. Although the movement of migrants peaked in 2015 with over one million migrants arriving in Europe, this number significantly dropped during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the UNHCR this is due to the preventative measures taken by States to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus such as “border closures, and the negative impact of the coronavirus crisis on global remittances from diaspora communities”. The figures demonstrate an upward trend in migration arrivals with 123.5 thousand arrivals in 2021. 

Despite the high risks taken by migrants to travel to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, the UNHCR stated that this situation is a “widespread, longstanding and largely overlooked tragedy”. 24,400 people have lost their lives or gone missing between 2014 and 2021 with 3,231 cases reported in 2021 alone. The No End in Sight visualization reminds us of the risks taken by migrants and the strategies adopted by the UNHCR to mitigate these risks. 

Sources and further reading:

United Nations. (2022, June 10). Mediterranean Sea journeys for migrants have grown more deadly: UNHCR. UN News. Retrieved on June 13, 2022, from https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120132

The United Nations Refugee Agency. (2022, June 10). The Mediterranean Situation. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/07502a24ce0646bb9703ce96630b15fa