At least 441 migrants died attempting the Central Mediterranean route in the first quarter of 2023 – the highest death toll since five years ago.
The latest figures for the world's most dangerous maritime crossing show an increasing loss of life amid more reports of government-led rescue delays and obstacles to humanitarian groups' search and rescue efforts, the International Organization for Migration reported on Wednesday.
The data is part of IOM's Missing Migrants Project that has recorded the number of deaths since 2014 among people trying to cross international borders, regardless of their legal status.
Tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter Europe, often through Italy or Malta, on a dangerous journey from North Africa and Turkey. Many of them transit through Libya.
The 26,334 documented cases of people who have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean – including at least 20,743 people who have died since 2014 – far eclipses the next most, 12,588 in Africa; 7,722 in the Americas; 5,518 in Asia; 2,134 in Western Asia; and 987 in Europe.
“The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable,” IOM Director General António Vitorino said of the 441 migrant deaths from January to March, the deadliest quarter since 2017.
Vitorino stressed that countries are obliged to save lives at sea. On Tuesday, the Italian Coast Guard and a commercial boat rescued a vessel carrying 800 people more than 200 kilometers southeast of Sicily.
A deadly route must not be 'normalized'
The number of documented deaths along the Central Mediterranean route likely undercounts the true number of lives lost. IOM, for example, says it is investigating cases of boats reported missing, with no records of survivors, that had 300 people aboard.
“With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized," Vitorino said. "States must respond. Delays and gaps in state-led [search and rescue] are costing human lives."
Delays in government-led rescues in the Central Mediterranean played a role in at least six incidents this year in which at least 127 people died, according to the U.N. migration agency, while the "complete absence of response" in a seventh case claimed at least 73 migrants' lives.
In late March, the Libyan Coast Guard fired shots in the air as NGO rescue ship Ocean Viking responded to a report of a rubber boat in distress and Italy detained another vessel, the Louise Michel, after it rescued 180 people at sea.
New laws by some countries along the migration route have tried to frustrate the work of search and rescue non-governmental organizations in the Mediterranean. That has drawn sharp criticism from human rights advocates and NGOs that say such restrictions will only result in more deaths on an already perilous route.
