Drowned, dead in the desert, fallen prey: Tally finds 56,800 migrants dead or missing

JOHANNESBURG – As migration increases around the world, so do the tens of thousands of people who simply die or disappear on their journey. Hardly counted in life, these migrants rarely record death – almost like they had never lived.

A growing number of migrants have drowned, died in the desert or have fallen prey to traffickers, leaving their families wondering what happened to them. At the same time, anonymous bodies fill cemeteries in Gauteng Province, South Africa, or in the Tunisian coastal town of Zarzis. Similar cemeteries are scattered throughout Italy, Greece and Libya.

A report from the Associated Press has documented more than 56,800 dead or missing migrants worldwide since 2014, nearly double the number found at the world 's only official attempt to count them, by the number of deaths. International Organization for Migration of the United States. As of 1 October, the number of victims at IOM was over 28,500. The AP has proposed an estimated 28,300 additional migrants dead or missing by compiling information from other international groups, forensic records, reports of missing persons, death records and data from thousands of interviews with migrants.

The count of the AP is also certainly an undercoverage. The bodies lie uncovered in the sands of the desert or at the bottom of the sea. And families do not always report that relatives are missing because they emigrated illegally or because they left without saying exactly where they were heading.

Instead, families are caught between hope and mourning, like that of Safi al-Bahri. His son, Majdi Barhoumi, left his hometown of Ras Jebel, Tunisia, on May 7, 2011 for Europe in a small boat with a dozen other migrants. The boat sank and Barhoumi has not had news since. As a sign of faith that he is alive, his mother and father built a pen with a brood of chickens, a few cows and a dog to watch until his return.

"I'm just waiting for it, I always imagine it behind me, at home, at the market, everywhere," said al-Bahri. "When I hear a voice at night, I think he's back in. When I hear the sound of a motorcycle, I think my son is back."

The official record of the United Nations documents abundantly deaths in the Mediterranean and Europe, but even in some cases it falls away. The political wave turns against migrants in Europe, just like in the United States, where the government represses severely caravans of Central America try to participate. One of the results is that the money is running out so that projects can track the migration and its costs.

For example, when more than 800 people died during a wreck in April 2015 off the coast of Italy, Europe's deadliest maritime disaster, Italian investigators pledged to identify and recover them. their families. More than three years later, under the new populist government, funding for this work was cut.

Beyond Europe, information is even rarer. Even in the United States, where migration has become a burning issue, there is no routine effort to determine where migrants can disappear or die, or a policy on body identification and notification to families. And little is known about the balance sheet in South America, where Venezuelan migration is today one of the largest in the world, and Asia, first region in number of migrants.

As a result, governments greatly underestimate the true record of migration, a major political and social problem in most countries of the world.

"It does not matter where you stand on the whole debate on migration management … they are still human beings on the move," said Bram Frouws, director of the Center for Mixed Migration, who led surveys of more than 20,000 migrants in its 4Mi project since 2014. "Whether refugees or people looking for a job, they are human beings."

Among the missing children are children, although, again, the few data are available only in Europe. Some 2,773 children were reported missing to the Red Cross en route to Europe and 2,097 adults missing.

Almass and his brother, both migrants from Khost, Afghanistan, are not on the list. He had just turned 14 when his widowed mother reluctantly sent him with his 11 year old brother from their home to the unknown. The payment of their trip was to distance them from the Taliban and go to Germany via a chain of smugglers.

But when the Iranian border police fired on their group, Almass lost his brother's hand and lost consciousness as he fell into a ravine. He never saw his brother again. When he then spoke to his mother, he could not bring himself to tell him. instead, he lied that his brother could not come on the phone but sent his love.

The phone number of the family in Afghanistan no longer works, their village is invaded by the Taliban and it has no idea how to find them – nor of the child whose hand he has escaped he four years ago.

"I do not know where they are now," he said, his anguished face as he sat on a sunny bench in the French countryside. "They do not know where I am either."