Migrant Rights Group: It's Beyond Time to Act on Needless Deaths

Their stories will never be fully known.

Driven by conflict, poverty, famine or just a better life, over 4,000 migrants have died so far this year while making their journeys, a new tally from the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration finds.

The grim numbers are outlined the organization’s new study, titled Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost During Migration (pdf), and compiled under IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.

Going back to 2000, IOM states that the number of migrants that have perished is over 40,000.

Despite the high figures—which the organization says could be vast underestimates—the report details how this group of people remains quite invisible, as they often need to make clandestine journeys for their own safety. But contributing to the invisibility of this epidemic is the fact that there is a dearth of data on these deaths, with no global-level organization tallying the statistic in border areas, and many national governments offer little data on the deaths.

That stands in contrast to the vast money and efforts spent on border controls, the group adds.