Four Decades of Cross-Mediterranean Undocumented Migration to Europe: A Review of the Evidence

IOM, the UN Migration Agency’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), today (24/11) released a new report reviewing the evidence of Four Decades of Cross-Mediterranean Undocumented Migration to Europe and concludes that Europe’s Mediterranean border is “by far the world’s deadliest.”

Relying on analysis of IOM estimates from the Missing Migrants Project, the report states that at least 33,761 migrants were reported to have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean between 2000 and 2017 (as of 30 June). Professor Philippe Fargues of the European University Institute, the report's author, notes that this number likely under-reports the actual scale of the human tragedy, even as the record number of migrant deaths may have begun to subside in 2017 due in part to cooperation between the EU and Turkey, and now Libya, to stem migrant flows.