Two UN agencies warned the Security Council on Monday that decisive action must be taken now to prevent the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean region from becoming “mass graveyards of migrants”.
The UN director of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Per Liljert, said that in 2023, the IOM recorded a total of 8,542 migrant deaths worldwide.
This is the highest number since data collection began in 2014.
37 percent of these deaths occurred in the Mediterranean Sea.
He mentioned some of the deadly routes taken by migrants and refugees trying to reach EU countries.
Director Per Liljert said on Monday that the scale of this tragedy, its impact on victims, families and communities and the speed with which such deaths are occurring on the roads, make it an intolerable, unsolvable and humanitarian crisis.
Reiterating the same message, Shivanka Dhanpala, director of the New York office of the UN refugee agency – UNHCR, told the Security Council that such tragedies, both at sea and on land, continue to take lives, and there is no end in sight. is coming
He said that UNHCR has registered about 350,000 refugees so far this year. Many of them are Sudanese refugees seeking asylum in North Africa.
From January to August, about 134,000 refugees and migrants left North and West Africa for Europe. This number is 24 percent lower than in 2023.
…to be continued…