For the past decade, the United Nations International Organization of
Migration (IOM) has collected data on the deaths of migrants. This
Missing Migrants Project publishes its numbers each year, and so this
April, it has released its latest figures. For the past ten years, the
IOM says that 64,371 women, men, and children have died while on the
move (half of them have died in the Mediterranean Sea). On average,
each year since 2014, 4,000 people have died. However, in 2023, the
number rose to 8,000. One in three migrants who flee a conflict zone
die on the way to safety. These numbers, however, are grossly deflated,
since the IOM simply cannot keep track of what they call “irregular
migration.” For instance, the IOM admits, “[S]ome experts believe that
more migrants die while crossing the Sahara Desert than in the
Mediterranean Sea.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/migrant-deaths