There were at least 5,303 people who died on their migration journeys last year, according to new data released by the Missing Migrants Project.
The largest number of deaths were recorded on the African continent and on the Mediterranean route.
The Missing Migrants Project tracks how many people have died or gone missing while trying to migrate. On Wednesday, they released updated data for the year 2019 on Twitter.
They said they had reviewed and included data from the Mixed Migration Centre, a research centre based in Geneva, Switzerland, in their statistics.
Most migrants died in Africa, Mediterranean
5,303 migrants died on their journeys in 2019, according to the updated Missing Migrants data. The project records minimum estimates, so the actual number of deaths could be much higher.
The deadliest regions for migrants were Africa and the Mediterranean. At least 1,885 migrants reportedly died in the Mediterranean. At least 1,887 migrants died in Africa; 981 of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, 782 in Northern Africa and 124 in the Horn of Africa region.
The third-deadliest region was the border region between the US and Mexico, where at least 520 migrants died last year.
In Europe, there were at least 148 migrant deaths in 2019.
Worth noting is that the Missing Migrants project uses migrants as an umbrella term for people trying to leave their home countries. That means that refugees and asylum seekers are counted among the dead migrants.
The numbers are based on data from the UN Organization for Migration (IOM) -- which operates the Missing Migrants project – as well as statistics from national authorities and media reports.
SOURCE: InfoMigrants
