For the past five years, an average of six people have died a day trying to reach the coasts of Spain in precarious boats, according to the latest report by Caminando Fronteras, presented in Barcelona this Monday. The organization has been collecting information on rescues and shipwrecks for 15 years and is most active in alerting authorities to dangerous situations in small boats and cayucos sailing from African coasts to Spanish coasts.
The document concludes that 11,286 people have died on its routes from Senegal’s southern coast to Algeria since 2018 and notes the disappearance of 241 ships with all their members on board. Since 2014, Caminando Fronteras has had a database of all the alerts they receive from ships in distress, counting the deceased and disappeared in close contact with their families and migrant communities. The migrants who died in these five years came from 31 countries such as Mali, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal and Gambia.
This year the number of deaths has dropped to 2020 levels, but Caminando Fronteras warns that it is still above the 2,000 deaths threshold, noting that the “mortality peak” recorded in 2021 is the Reflecting tensions in relations between Spain and Morocco. This year, alongside tensions and less cooperation between countries, the flow of irregular arrivals by sea remained high, concentrated on the Canary Islands route, which was much more dangerous than the others. The islands’ Atlantic route actually collects 68% of the deaths (7,692), with a big difference with the second, the Algerian (1,526), followed by that of Alborán (1,493). The drop in deaths this year coincides with a 25% drop in arrivals compared to 2021.
Helena Maleno, founder of the facility, denounced in the presentation that European countries only work together to “control migration” but not to protect the “right to life” of migrants who leave for reasons such as “armed conflict, sexist violence or climate change”. He has indicated that this report represents an “act of reparation” for families and communities with missing migrants: “This task should be done by the public administration, but we will continue until the responsibility is taken to count the people who arrive and not arriving.” Maleno has pointed to the “invisibility” that occurs when missing ships are not registered after a week if they have not reached Spanish territory.
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The activist was investigated by Morocco in 2015 and accused of smuggling migrants for alerting Maritime Rescue to its relief efforts. After the case was brought before a Tangiers court in 2019, Maleno was deported from Morocco last year. For twenty years he had worked in the African country under threats, denouncing human rights abuses by both the Moroccan and Spanish authorities.
In addition to Maleno, the International Organization for Migration also calculates the possible victims at sea, although their data are much more conservative. According to this UN body, 5,002 migrants have died on two routes (western Mediterranean and Atlantic) since 2018, 55% fewer than recorded by Caminando Fronteras in the same period.
Evidence of the Melilla Tragedy
Caminando Fronteras’ research, which collects quantitative and qualitative data, includes testimonies such as that of a community leader who was present at the jump in Melilla and Nador this summer. “What we saw in Beni Mellal right after leaving the train station, there were more than 400 people outside. many of them were children. There were children aged 12, 13 or even 9, 10 years old, they were very young. We saw a lot of injuries, people who broke both their legs. We got to work and immediately took her to the hospital. But when we went back to feed them, we found that the real problem for many children was that they had no brothers, no sisters, and no mothers. “Where are your brothers?” we asked. And they say: “I left them in Nador. You are no longer alive. Did they die”. The Moroccan Association for Human Rights reported 77 people missing after this episode.
AT, mother of a girl who died at the border, explained: “I’ve already seen her, she’s my girl. Thank you for finding her. It’s swollen, I was told it’s from the sea, but it’s her, I knew that as soon as I saw her, she’s wearing the clothes I put on her and the braids I gave her have made myself. The gendarme told me we’re going to do a blood test, but I know it’s her. They asked me if I wanted to take them with me or bury them here. I told them that we are Muslims and that I just want her to be buried as soon as possible, washed and prayed to her as the Koran dictates. I have no strength, she was my only daughter. I feel guilty for not protecting her, but I couldn’t ride the dinghy. I wish I’d died with her.”
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