Migrant Fatalities Worldwide

Missing Migrants Project draws on a range of sources to track the deaths of migrants along migratory routes across the globe. Due to the nature of irregular migration, all data are necessarily an estimate rather than a complete figure. Data are presented on this website and analyzed in data briefings and annual reports, including Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost during Migration, published in September 2014, and Fatal Journeys Volume 2: identification and Tracting of Dead and Missing Migrants, released in June 2016. 

With a count surpassing 46,000 fatalities since 2000, IOM calls on all the world’s governments to address what it describes as “an epidemic of crime and victimization.”

“Our message is blunt: migrants are dying who need not,” said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, “It is time to do more than count the number of dead. It is time to engage the world to stop this violence against desperate migrants.”

The research behind this project began with the tragedies in October 2013, when over 400 migrants died in two shipwrecks near the Italian island of Lampedusa. IOM’s research indicates that Europe is the world’s most dangerous destination for “irregular” migrants, with the Mediterranean costing the lives of more than 3,700 in 2015 and more than 5,000 in 2016. Around the world, at least 7,500 migrants lost their lives in 2016, and many more are unaccounted for.  Please note that past data may be changed and updated, as new data sources emerge.
 

Recorded migrant deaths by month, 2017*

3,125 total dead and missing

Recorded migrant deaths by region, 2017

Recorded migrant deaths by migrants' region of origin, 2017

Recorded migrant deaths by month, 2016*

7,927 total dead and missing

Notes: (a) All numbers represent only deaths that are reported by government authorities, media, the UN or NGOs. Countless others have died on migratory routes around the world; thus, these are minimums of the actual numbers. All should be taken as estimates. (b) Europe refers to the region generally, and not the European Union. (c) Sub-Saharan Africa excludes the Horn of Africa. (d) Deaths along the Western African route to the Canary Islands are included in Middle East and North Africa. (e) Central America includes deaths in Mexico not on the border to the United States.

*Last updated on 8 June 2017 

Recorded migrant deaths by region, 2016

Recorded migrant deaths by migrants' region of origin, 2016

Recorded migrant deaths by month, 2015*

6,259 total dead and missing

Notes: (a) All numbers represent only deaths that are reported by government entities, media, the UN or NGOs. Countless others have died on migratory routes around the world; thus, these are minimums of the actual numbers. All data should be taken as estimates. (b) Europe refers to the region generally, and not the European Union. (c) Sub-Saharan Africa and Middle East/North Africa exclude the Horn of Africa. (d) Deaths along the Western African route to the Canary Islands are included in Middle East and North Africa. 

*Last updated on 19 April 2017 

Recorded migrant deaths by region, 2015

Recorded migrant deaths by migrants' region of origin, 2015

Recorded migrant deaths by month, 2014**

Note: All numbers represent only deaths that are reported by government entities, media, the UN or NGOs. Countless others have died on migratory routes around the world; thus, these are minimums of the actual numbers. All data should be taken as estimates. **Last updated 20 April 2017

5,281 total dead and missing

Recorded migrant deaths by region, 2014

Recorded migrant deaths by migrants' region of origin, 2014