Migrant crisis death toll may be far higher than thought

A leading UN official said twice as many migrants die while attempting to cross Africa to reach Europe than perish making their way across the Mediterranean Sea.

Vincent Cochetel, the UN refugee agency’s envoy for the central Mediterranean, said the scale of the crisis was much greater than many people appreciated.

“We assume that at least two times as many people probably die on their way to the Mediterranean as in the sea itself. It is a tragedy,” he said.

A monitoring mission by the International Organisation for Migration estimates that 1,087 migrants drowned crossing the Mediterranean this year. It said 2,299 migrants died or went missing last year.

About 19,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean between 2014 and the end of last month.

The comments came as a report in the UK attacked the government’s short-term approach to migration risks, saying it exacerbated the crisis.

The cross-party group of backbench British MPs found that EU deals with countries such as Libya, Niger and Sudan risked fuelling human rights abuses and could be used as leverage, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

having threated to “open the gates” to allow Syrian refugees to enter Europe.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee said it was “deeply concerned” by the lack of search and rescue ships in the Mediterranean and said the UK government had done little to show it was engaged with the problem.

One witness the committee spoke to accused Europe of “letting people die as a deterrent” to migration as a result of the lack of rescue ships in the Mediterranean.

“We recommend the UK government works with European partners to take the necessary steps to ensure additional search-and-rescue capability,” the committee said.

This year, one person died for every six who made it to Europe after leaving Libya, the main origin of migrants, compared to one in 38 in 2017.

“A policy focused exclusively on closing borders serves to drive migrants to take more dangerous routes and pushes them into the hands of criminal groups,” the report said.

It called for greater protection for migrants in detention centres and said there was evidence migrants were tortured and subjected to sexual abuse.

“The EU’s migration deals with Libya have achieved the short-term political ‘win’ of cutting migrant numbers, but at the cost of fuelling human rights abuses, strengthening armed groups and undermining stability in the longer term,” the report said.

The committee’s chairman, Tom Tugendhat, said unexpected surges in irregular migration were possible and cited the US withdrawal from northern Syria and a Turkish military operation in the area as a possible spark for an increased migration of people into Europe.

Mr Tugendhat said the discovery of 39 bodies in the back of a lorry in England last month should serve as a “wake-up call” to the government that the UK was not immune from migrant crises.

In response to the report, the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was working with international partners to deal with the criminal groups responsible for human trafficking.

“Tackling the scourge of human trafficking at every stage of the migrant journey – overseas, at our borders and in the UK – is a major priority,” a UK government spokesman said.

“The government and law enforcement agencies work extensively with European and global partners, key transit countries and the nations of origin to stand up to the global criminal industry that perpetuates human suffering.”