110,669 immigrants and refugees tried to get to Europe by one of the three Mediterranean routes last year, a slight drop compared to 2018.
The International Organisation for Migrations (IOM) says over 100,000 undocumented immigrants arrived by sea for the sixth consecutive year.
The IOM says 1,283 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean in 2019, a thousand less than 2018 when 2,299 people lost their lives trying to get to Europe by sea. A total of 19,164 immigrants have died trying to get to Europe since 2014.
The Central Mediterranean Route (CMR), between North Africa and Italy, is the deadliest. Researchers who are part of the IOM’s Missing Migrants project say 1 in 33 people who used that route to get to Europe in 2019 were killed in the attempt.
Although the number of shipwrecks has dropped (from 2,299 in 2018 to 2,183 in 2019), the IOM warned this data does not include a number of shipwrecks that still need to be confirmed.
The IOM started to record deaths along the different immigration routes in 2014. A total of 34,532 people have died so far, 3,368 of them in 2019 alone.
The Brussels Times
