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04-01-2025
MADRID: At least 46,843 people reached Spain’s Canary Islands in 2024 through the increasingly deadly Atlantic migration route, the country’s interior ministry has said.
The European country received 63,970 migrants who arrived through irregular routes last year, the vast majority in the Atlantic archipelago, up from 56,852 in 2023, the ministry said on Thursday.
EU border agency Frontex noted that irregular crossings into the bloc from January to November 2024 fell 40 percent overall but grew 19 percent on the Atlantic route, with people from Mali, Senegal and Morocco attempting to cross.
Years of conflict in the Sahel region, unemployment, and the effect of climate change on farming communities are among the reasons why people attempt the crossing.
The Atlantic route, which includes departure points in Senegal, The Gambia, Mauritania and Morocco, is also the world’s deadliest.
Last week, at least 69 people, including 25 Malians, died after a boat heading from West Africa to the Canary Islands capsized off Morocco.
A report by NGO Caminando Fronteras last month, said at least 10,457 migrants died or disappeared while trying to reach Spain by sea from January 1 to December 5, 2024.
Caminando Fronteras added that it was a 50 percent increase from 2023 and the highest toll since its tallies began in 2007, and attributed it to the use of ramshackle boats, dangerous waters and a lack of resources for rescues.
Migrant aid group Walking Borders also blamed a lack of action or arbitrary rescues and the criminalization of migrants for the surge in deaths at sea. The aid group has accused European governments of “the prioritization of immigration control over the right to life”.
More than 10,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea this year, a report released by a Spanish migration rights group has revealed, the most since it began keeping a tally in 2007.
On average, that means 30 migrants died every day this year attempting to reach the country by boat, the NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said on Thursday.
Overall deaths rose by 58 percent compared with last year, the report added.
Tens of thousands of migrants left West Africa in 2024 for the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago close to the African coast that has increasingly been used as a stepping stone to continental Europe.
Caminando Fronteras said most of the 10,457 deaths recorded up until December 15 took place along that crossing, the so-called Atlantic route considered one of the world’s most dangerous.
The organization compiles its figures from families of migrants and official statistics of those rescued. It included 1,538 children and 421 women among the dead. April and May were the deadliest months, the report said.
It blamed the use of flimsy boats and increasingly dangerous routes as well as the insufficient capacity of maritime rescue services for the surge in deaths.
“These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems. More than 10,400 people dead or missing in a single year is an unacceptable tragedy,” the group’s founder, Helena Maleno, said in a statement.
The victims were from 28 nations, mostly in Africa, but also from Iraq and Pakistan.
Many migrants, including women, also experience “violence, discrimination, racism, deportations and sexual violence, being forced to survive in extreme conditions” before departing, the report said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
