OIM — Fatal Journeys — VOLUME 1 — Tracking Lives Lost during Migration (Edited by Tara Brian and Frank Laczko) — 2015

https://publications.iom.int/fr/books/fatal-journeys-tracking-lives-lost-during-migration

In Octo­ber 2013, over 400 peo­ple lost their lives in two ship­wrecks close to the Ital­ian island of Lampe­dusa. While these two events were high­ly pub­li­cized, sad­ly they are not iso­lat­ed inci­dents; the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion (IOM) esti­mates that in 2013 and 2014 near­ly 6,500 migrants lost their lives in bor­der regions around the world. Because many deaths occur in remote areas and are nev­er report­ed, counts of deaths fail to cap­ture the full num­ber of lives lost.

Despite recog­ni­tion that actions must be tak­en to stop more unnec­es­sary deaths, as yet there remains very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on the scale of the prob­lem. The vast major­i­ty of gov­ern­ments do not pub­lish num­bers of deaths, and count­ing lives lost is large­ly left to civ­il soci­ety and the media. Draw­ing upon data from a wide range of sources from dif­fer­ent regions of the world, Fatal Jour­neys: Track­ing Lives Lost dur­ing Migra­tion inves­ti­gates how bor­der-relat­ed deaths are doc­u­ment­ed, who is doc­u­ment­ing them, and what can be done to improve the evi­dence base to encour­age informed account­abil­i­ty, pol­i­cy and practice.

Region­al­ly focused chap­ters present most recent sta­tis­tics and address a num­ber of key ques­tions regard­ing how migrant bor­der-relat­ed deaths are enu­mer­at­ed. Chap­ters address: migra­tion routes through Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to the Unit­ed States, with a focus on the Unit­ed States–Mexico bor­der region; the south­ern Euro­pean Union bor­der­ing the Mediter­ranean; routes from sub-Saha­ran Africa to North Africa; routes tak­en by migrants emi­grat­ing from the Horn of Africa towards the Gulf or South­ern Africa; and the waters sur­round­ing Australia.

Num­bers have the pow­er to cap­ture atten­tion, and while counts of bor­der-relat­ed deaths will always be esti­mates, they serve to make con­crete some­thing which has been left vague and ill-defined. In a way, through count­ing, deaths too often invis­i­ble are giv­en exis­tence. More com­plete data can not only serve to high­light the extent of what is tak­ing place, but is also cru­cial in guid­ing effec­tive pol­i­cy response.