Nearly 8,000 died or vanished on migrant routes in 2025, UN says

BERLIN: At least 7,667 people died or went missing last year on migration routes around the world, but the true death toll is likely higher, the UN’s migration agency reported Thursday.

The figure was down on 2024 when almost 9,200 deaths were recorded, but the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said numbers nonetheless reflected the “global scale” of the crisis faced by migrants.

“The continued loss of life on migration routes is a global failure we cannot accept as normal,” said IOM Director General Amy Pope.

She argued for safer legal routes, adding:  “These deaths are not inevitable.”

Funding cuts for aid groups, crackdowns on humanitarian NGOs and limited access to data are making it more difficult to accurately track deaths, the UN agency said.

Sea crossings such as the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea from Africa to Europe remain among the deadliest routes for migrants, the report said.

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At least 2,108 people went missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2025, and another 1,047 died or vanished while trying to cross to Spain’s Canary Islands, according to IOM.

The actual figures are “likely higher”, it said.

The first two months of 2026 have already seen “an unprecedented number of migrant deaths” in the Mediterranean, the agency warned, with 606 people recorded dead on the crossing as of Tuesday – even as arrivals in Italy decline sharply.

“There are reports of hundreds more missing at sea that cannot yet be verified,” IOM said.

The organisation said the remains of 23 people had been washed up on southern Italian and Libyan coasts in the past two weeks.

Globally, the decline in the number of dead and missing last year was partly due to fewer people attempting dangerous migration routes, particularly in the Americas, according to the agency.

Lower numbers were trying to get through the US-Mexico border or cross the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, the organisation said.

The IOM recorded the fewest deaths – 409 – since the reports began in 2014 in the Americas last year, although final numbers will come later in the year.