The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 3,789 deaths in 2022 along sea and land routes in the MENA region, including crossings in the Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea.
“This alarming death toll on migration routes within and from the MENA region demands immediate attention and concerted efforts to enhance the safety and protection of migrants,” Othman Belbeisi, IOM regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.
“IOM urges increased international and regional cooperation as well as resources to address this humanitarian crisis and prevent further loss of lives.”
The report said the death toll – 11 percent higher than recorded in 2021 and the highest since the 4,255 documented six years ago – was likely much greater because of scant official data and limited access to migration routes for civil society and international organisations.
“Our data shows that 92 percent of people dying on this route remain unidentified,” Koko Warner, director of the Global Data Institute, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The tragic loss of life on dangerous migration routes highlights the importance of data and analysis in driving action.”
On sea routes from the region to Europe, IOM recorded an increase in deadly incidents that involved boats travelling to Greece and Italy from Lebanon.
IOM said the highest number of deaths on land routes in the region last year was recorded in war-torn Yemen, where the agency said violence against migrants increased.
At least 795 people, mostly Ethiopians, died on a route between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the IOM said. Most of the deaths occurred in Yemen’s northern province of Saada. Libya recorded 117 deaths and there were 54 fatalities in neighbouring Algeria.
As many as 10,000 migrant workers from south and south-east Asia die every year in the Gulf countries, according to a report by a group of human rights organisations.
More than half of the deaths are unexplained, said the report, and are commonly recorded as due to “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”. But Gulf states are failing properly to investigate why so many migrant workers are dying.
The report, Vital Signs: The deaths of migrants in the Gulf, has been compiled by NGOs from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines, and FairSquare Projects, a London-based migrant rights organisation.
Low-paid migrant workers in the Gulf are exposed to a series of risks to their health, including heat and humidity, air pollution, overwork and abusive working conditions, poor occupational health and safety practices, psychosocial stress and hypertension. Long hours of manual labour in searing temperatures can result in heat stress, which can lead to organ damage, the report said.
Julhas Uddin, a 37-year-old man from Bangladesh, died in Saudi Arabia in October 2017 when a supervisor instructed him to enter a sewerage line without an oxygen cylinder. No investigation was conducted, and his death certificate states the cause as “heart and breathing stopped”.
There are about 30 million migrants working in the Arab Gulf states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. About 80% of these are employed in low-paid sectors such as construction, hospitality and domestic work, and come from poorer countries in Asia and Africa.
“Despite the Gulf states’ practical dependence on their migrant workforces and the bolstering impact migrant worker remittances have on the economies of their homelands, both origin and Gulf states have for too long paid inadequate attention to ensuring they return home in good health,” said Anurag Devkota, a lawyer from Nepal’s Law and Policy Forum for Social Justice. “As a result far too many do not return home at all, or do so in coffins or body bags.”
Despite widespread criticism of worker exploitation – notably in relation to Qatar’s preparations to host this year’s World Cup – the Gulf states have largely avoided structural labour reforms, and origin states have been unable to ensure proper protection for their nationals abroad.
The governments of the six Gulf countries did not respond to requests for comment.
