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More than 2,200 people either died or went missing in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe in search of refuge in 2024.
The figure, cited in a statement from Regina De Dominicis, the regional director for Europe and central Asia for the UN’s children’s agency, Unicef, was eclipsed on New Year’s Eve when 20 people were reported missing after falling into the sea when a boat started to take in water in rough seas about 20 miles off the coast of Libya.
Despite the waves, seven people, including an eight-year-old Syrian boy, managed to continue the journey on the tilting vessel before being found by an Italian police patrol boat on Tuesday night close to the southern island of Lampedusa.
The 6-metre boat had left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday and started to take in water about five hours later, creating panic and causing 20 passengers to fall overboard, according to witness statements provided by the six adult survivors.
In a separate incident on Monday, two people, including a five-year-old child, died and 17 survived after the vessel they were on broke down off the northern Tunisian coastline during an attempt to reach Europe.
De Dominicis said: “The death toll and number of missing persons in the Mediterranean in 2024 have now surpassed 2,200, with nearly 1,700 lives lost on the central Mediterranean route alone.
“This includes hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating through the Mediterranean. The majority are fleeing violent conflict and poverty.”
In December, an 11-year-old girl, wearing a simple life vest and clinging to a pair of tyre tubes, was rescued off Lampedusa. She told rescuers she had spent three days at sea after a shipwreck that is presumed to have killed 40 people.
A month earlier the German NGO Sea-Watch filed a criminal complaint to prosecutors in Sicily accusing the Italian coastguard of negligence and multiple manslaughter over a shipwreck off Lampedusa that killed 21 people. The NGO said it had notified the Italian authorities of the boat in distress on 2 September, but alleged that the coastguard did not dispatch a rescue vessel until two days later.
At least four boats have capsized in the central Mediterranean since Tuesday, according to Alarm Phone, an organisation that runs a hotline for people in distress at sea.
Italy is one of the main landing points for people trying to reach Europe, with the central Mediterranean route considered one of the world’s most dangerous. The UN’s International Organization for Migration has registered at least 25,500 deaths and disappearances during the Mediterranean crossing since 2014. Most of the deaths or disappearances are attributed to boats departing from either Tunisia or Libya.
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People still attempt the high-risk journey despite deals struck between Italy and the EU with Tunisia and Libya to stop migrant boats from leaving.
According to the Italian interior ministry, 66,317 people managed to reach Italy in 2024, less than half the number in 2023. The hardline policies of Giorgia Meloni’s government are at least partially credited for the decrease.
The deal with Libya essentially pushes people back to detention camps where they face torture and other abuses. Shocking abuse against migrants in Tunisia was reported by the Guardian in September.
A €670m (£556m) deal to transport 3,000 people intercepted in Italian seas each month to Albania, where they would have their asylum claims processed, came into force in October and is also supposed to act as a deterrent. But the plan has so far been unsuccessful due to legal issues.
