MADRID, Spain
Over 4,000 migrants died or disappeared
trying to reach Spain by sea in 2021, twice as many as in the previous year, a
migrant rights group said on Monday.
A migrant is comforted by a member of the Spanish Red Cross at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta near the border of Morocco and Spain, in May 2021.
Migrant arrivals in Spain’s Canary
Islands in the Atlantic have increased since late 2019 after increased patrols
along Europe’s southern coast dramatically reduced crossings to the continent
via the Mediterranean.
This route is fraught with dangers due to
strong currents and the greater distances involved.
A total of 4,404 migrants perished or vanished
in attempts to reach Spain last year, up from 2,170 in 2020, according to
Spanish non-governmental organisation Caminando Fronteras, which tracks data
from boats in distress.
That is the highest yearly number since the
group started keeping records in 2015.
The bodies of the vast majority of migrants, 94
per cent, were never found so they are counted as missing.
Over 90 per cent of the deaths or
disappearances last year, 4,016, took place during attempts to reach Spain’s
Canary Islands.
The shortest route to the archipelago is more
than 100km (60 miles) from the Moroccan coast.
“There are painful figures,” Maria Gonzalez
Rollan, one of the authors of the annual report, told a news conference.
Migration routes to Spain were becoming more
“feminised”, with 628 women and 205 children among those who died or went
missing last year while trying to reach the country, she added.
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The figures from the NGO are much higher than
those from the UN International Organisation for Migration which has counted
1,279 deaths or disappearances of migrants on their way to Spain from northern
Africa last year.
At least 37,385 migrants arrived in Spain by
sea last year, according to Spanish interior ministry figures, slightly less
than the 38,014 that arrived in 2020.
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