GENEVA (Reuters) -More than 3,000 refugees, migrants and asylum seekers died or went missing last year while trying to reach Europe via Mediterranean and Atlantic sea routes, a UN refugee agency report showed on Friday, reporting the highest toll in recent years.
Thousands of Africans take long, perilous journeys to Europe each year often traversing the Sahara desert and leaving the north African shores on small, inflatable boats fleeing hardship or seeking a better life. Last year, the UNHCR reported 3,077 people as dead or missing, nearly double the 2020 toll.
“We are seeing the increases soar,” UNHCR’s Shabia Mantoo told a news briefing in Geneva. “It’s alarming.”
UNHCR began releasing consolidated tolls in 2019 and the number of lives lost has risen each year.
The tolls do not include those lost along land routes such as through the punishing Sahara Desert nor those lost in smuggler-run detention centers where survivors have reported sexual violence and forced marriage and labor.