UN: Over 2,500 migrants dead or missing in the Mediterranean in 2023

WORLD, Sept. 29 (YPA) – Over 2,500 people died or have gone missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, according  the United Nations Refugee Agency.

Ruven Menikdiwela, director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New York, told the UN Security Council that “By September 24, over 2,500 people were accounted as dead or missing in 2023 alone. The number marked a large increase over the 1,680 who died or went missing in the same period in 2022.”

Menikdiwela further said that the UN Refugee Agency saw “no end in sight” to the lives lost at sea and on land routes to Europe, which are similarly dangerous.

She explained that the land journey from sub-Saharan African countries to sea crossing departure points on the Tunisian and Libyan coasts “remains one of the world’s most dangerous.

“Lives are also lost on land, away from public attention,” Menikdiwela added.

According to the UNHCR official, the migrants and refugees “risk death and gross human rights violations at every step.”

E.M