The death rate for migrants attempting to reach Europe has risen even though the numbers trying to make the crossing has fallen, the UN Refugee Agency has warned.
More than 1,600 people have died or gone missing this year, the UNHCR said in a new report, with the rate of fatalities rising sharply, particularly in the Mediterranean Sea.
For every 18 people crossing to Europe over the central Mediterranean between January and July 2018, one person died. Over the same period in 2017, there was one death for each 42 refugees and migrants attempting the crossing.
The UN report blamed the increase in the death rate on fewer NGO boats being active on the Libyan coast. In 2017, there were eight but now there are just two. The Libyan Coast Guard, which has two patrol boats, is now the main organisation intervening off the Libyan coast.
In practice this has meant migrants travelling in unsafe vessels for longer and further with less likelihood of being detected and with fewer boats able to help, the UNHCR said.
“This report once again confirms the Mediterranean as one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings,” said UNHCR’s director of the bureau for Europe, Pascale Moreau.
“With the number of people arriving on European shores falling, this is no longer a test of whether Europe can manage the numbers, but whether Europe can muster the humanity to save lives,” Mr Moreau said.
There were 172,301 sea arrivals to Italy, Greece, Spain and Cyprus in 2017 with 3,139 people dead or missing. At the height of the migration crisis in 2015, there were more than a million sea arrivals with 3,771 deaths.
So far this year, 1,540 migrants and refugees are dead or missing out of a total of 68,199 sea arrivals, which would suggest a similar death toll to previous years, despite fewer crossings.
There have been ten incidents in which 50 or more people died in the Central Mediterranean, with seven such tragedies since June. Most had left Libya in an attempt to reach Europe.
The agency, which has demanded Europe acts to create safe and legal migration pathways, published its findings in a report on Monday to coincide with the three-year anniversary of the body of Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi being found on a Turkish beach.
The UNHCR wants the EU to remove obstacles to family reunification and increase the number of asylum seekers taken in from refugee camps outside of the bloc.
However, the bloc is deeply divided over migration policy with new fiercely anti-migrant governments in Austria and Italy.
Italy has threatened to pull out of the European Union’s search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean unless other EU countries agree to allow rescued migrants to land at their ports rather than just Italian ones.
The European Commission, which brokered the EU-Turkey migrant deal which is credited with dramatically cutting migrant crossings, said it should not be blamed for the deaths in the Mediterranean.
Instead “the cruel and dangerous business model” of people-smugglers should be held responsible, a spokeswoman said in Brussels before pointing out the EU was training the Libyan Coast Guard.
“Saving lives is our top priority and this is what we have been working relentlessly to do,” the spokeswoman said, before calling for a unified approach from EU member countries.