Migrants on the perilous overland journey across North Africa to the Mediterranean and Europe face the risk of rape, torture, sex trafficking and even organ theft if they are not allowed to die from dehydration or disease, according to a new report released by the United Nations.
Migrant deaths in the Mediterranean have attracted global attention over the past decade, but a report released on Friday by two United Nations agencies and the Mixed Migration Center said “it is likely that at least twice as many people died in the desert”. Non-Governmental Research Group.
The report, based on interviews with more than 31,000 migrants along the route between 2020 and 2023, documents the growing brutality experienced by migrants from dozens of countries trying to cross the Sahel and Sahara as they flee war. environmental degradation and poverty.
With the exception of sexual violence, which is reported separately, physical violence is the most commonly identified risk among immigrants. Dangers along the way include arbitrary detention – often to extort money from family members – and human trafficking for labor, sex or criminal activity. Migrants recount experiences of torture and even organ harvesting.
Violence is often at the hands of organized crime groups and militias, especially human traffickers who pay European herders. Traffickers often lie to migrants about the dangers they face, demand more money from them once they are far from home, and provide little food, water and other supplies along the way.
“I believe all accidents happen at sea,” Teklebrhan Tefamariam Tekle, an Eritrean refugee now living in Sweden, told an interviewer. “The accident happened in the Sahara Desert. It was full of Eritrean bodies. There you will find the bones and skulls of the dead.
Others said migrants and traffickers simply abandoned people who collapsed from thirst or injuries along the way. “You just keep going,” said a man named Abraham. “You never look back.”
About a third of the adults surveyed were women, who face particular risks. According to a 2020 United Nations study, an estimated 90% of women and girls traveling along the Mediterranean route are raped, with some forced into sex work to pay for the journey. There were reports of women being forced to marry and bear children with their captors, and some had to pay sexual favors for the safe passage of a group of people.
“These stories are truly horrific,” Judith Sunderland said. . She said the account in the report sounded tragically similar to what she heard.
“You can’t believe how cruel people can be to each other,” she added. “You can’t understand how people still make these journeys, many of them knowing the risks.”
Migrants ranked Libya, Algeria and Ethiopia as the most dangerous countries.
The United Nations Refugee Agency, one of the authors of the new report, said that more than 72,400 migrants will cross the Mediterranean in 2024 alone, and at least 785 are known to have died or gone missing. The report’s authors said that while tracking sea crossings is difficult, it is even harder to estimate how many people are trying to reach Africa’s northern coast after crossing remote, sparsely populated and often lawless deserts – and how many people are en route. Disappeared.
The report states that 1,180 people are known to have died crossing the Sahara between January 2020 and May 2024, but the true number is likely to be much higher.
European countries have long tried to varying degrees to discourage migration and have paid North African countries to stop people from crossing the sea. A recent investigation by the News Media Alliance found that in some cases European governments paid to train and equip North African security forces, forcing migrants off the coast and back into the desert without supplies, putting their lives at risk.
Some of the countries migrants try to cross are either plagued by armed conflict and abject poverty, or have weak central governments.
The report, sponsored by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, said a combination of instability and hostility means migrants in Africa have few opportunities to seek any help from authorities or receive treatment for physical or emotional trauma.
The report, which updates and expands on a report released in 2020, said that since then, “security situations have further deteriorated in some countries, leading to increased displacement and cross-border movements of people and migrants in need of international protection.”
