BARCELONA (Reuters) – More than 4,400 migrants, including at least 205 children, have died trying to reach Spain in 2021, twice as many victims as in 2020, according to a census released on Monday by the NGO Caminando Fronteras (On the way to the borders).
This assessment, the highest since the first count made by the association in 2018, is notably attributable, according to her, to the increasingly dangerous journeys, to the increasingly summary boats, as well as to the growing fears of certain ships to come. helping migrants at sea.
According to Caminando Fronteras, more than 90% of the missing died in 124 shipwrecks that occurred during crossings to the Canary Islands, according to a count stopped on December 20.
Since 2020, this Spanish archipelago located in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Morocco, has been the preferred destination for migrants trying to reach Spain, with more dangerous crossings than via the Mediterranean, where controls have been tightened.
Helena Maleno, founder of the NGO, told Reuters that the association was relying on information gathered through hotlines set up to allow migrants to contact relief or family members of the missing in information research.
The association is interested in the fate of each boat and considers dead those who have been missing at sea for more than a month, or around 95% of cases.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM), for its part, reports 955 people dead or missing last year while trying to reach the Canaries.
This assessment, stopped on December 22, is the heaviest recorded by this UN institution since 2014.
(Report Joan Faus in Barcelona, Emma Pinedo and Nathan Allen in Madrid, French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Nicolas Delame)