OIM — Fatal Journeys Volume 3 Part 2: Improving Data on Missing Migrants — 2017

Since 2014, the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Migra­tion has record­ed the deaths of near­ly 25,000 migrants. This fig­ure is a sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tor of the human toll of unsafe migra­tion, yet fails to cap­ture the true num­ber of peo­ple who have died or gone miss­ing dur­ing migra­tion. This report, the third vol­ume in the Fatal Jour­neys series, focus­es on improv­ing data on migrant fatal­i­ties. It is pub­lished in two parts. Part 1 crit­i­cal­ly exam­ines the exist­ing and poten­tial sources of data on miss­ing migrants. Part 2 focus­es on six key regions across the world, dis­cussing the region­al data chal­lenges and con­text of migrant deaths and disappearances.

The sec­ond part of Fatal Jour­neys Vol­ume 3 makes five key rec­om­men­da­tions that emerge from the com­par­i­son of regions and inno­v­a­tive method­olo­gies dis­cussed in both parts of the report:

(a) Make bet­ter use of admin­is­tra­tive data: Local, nation­al and region­al author­i­ties that col­lect data on miss­ing migrants should pub­lish these data wher­ev­er and when­ev­er pos­si­ble, in accor­dance with data pro­tec­tion stan­dards. These author­i­ties should also coop­er­ate to stan­dard­ize data col­lec­tion to improve the pos­si­bil­i­ties for data com­par­i­son and cross-checking.

(b) Pro­mote sur­vey-based data col­lec­tion: In areas where few insti­tu­tions col­lect data on miss­ing migrants, or where access is an issue, sur­veys can pro­vide new data on deaths and the risks peo­ple face dur­ing migration.

© Explore new tech­nolo­gies: The use of mod­ern tech­nolo­gies and data sources, such as “big data”, pilot­ed in some regions, could be expand­ed to improve the avail­abil­i­ty and com­plete­ness of data on migrant fatalities.

(d) Work with fam­i­lies and civ­il soci­ety: The needs of fam­i­lies of miss­ing migrants should be a cen­tral con­cern in all stages of data col­lec­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion process­es. Data col­lec­tion efforts led by fam­i­ly and civ­il soci­ety groups should be encour­aged through col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er actors.

(e) Improve data shar­ing: Across the world, data on miss­ing migrants are frag­ment­ed and not shared effec­tive­ly. Data shar­ing and coop­er­a­tion between actors work­ing on the issue of miss­ing migrants should be promoted.