The UN say more migrants and refugees are crossing dangerous routes in the Sahara, becoming subject to all kinds of violence, according to AP News.
Criminal gangs in the Sahara subject migrants to enslavement, organ removal, rape, kidnapping for ransom and other abuses, according to a UN report.
The report, released Friday by the UN refugee and migration agencies and the Mixed Migration Centre research group, estimated that land routes in Africa were twice as deadly as sea routes across the Mediterranean Sea.
New conflicts and instability in countries, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan, fuelled an increase in travelling to the Mediterranean, the report emphasised. Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Guinea were the leading countries of origin for migrants.
This comes as many politicians in Europe and beyond have fuelled or gained support from anti-immigrant sentiment in an important election year. However, conflict, economic discord, repression, and the effects of climate change in many countries in the developing world have nonetheless increased the flow of migrants across borders. This has led to greater risks of physical violence and fatalities.
Refugees and migrants are increasingly traversing areas where insurgent groups, militias and other criminal actors operate, and where human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, forced labor and sexual exploitation are rife.
The authors recognise that complete statistics on deaths on land routes in Africa are not available. However, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported a more than threefold increase in the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Tunisia. It is a key transit country for migrants seeking to reach Europe.
Perilous journey
More than 72,000 migrants have crossed land routes leading to the Mediterranean Sea in these six months. 785 people are dead or missing, according to UNHCR.
In total, 1,180 persons are known to have died while crossing the Sahara Desert for the period January 2020 to May 2024, but the number is believed to be much higher.
UNHCR special envoy Vincent Cochetel stated that some smugglers dropped sick people from pickup trucks while carrying them across the desert, or did not return to pick up those who had fallen.
Everyone that has crossed the Sahara can tell you of people they know who died in the desert, whereas you interview people in Lampedusa: Not that many people will tell you about people they know who … died at sea.
He referred to an Italian island in the Mediterranean. Earlier this year, the UN International Organisation for Migration reported that more than 3,100 people died last year while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Cochetel reports that teams have counted hundreds of cases of organ removal, a common practice that has been going on for years. Sometimes migrants agree to such evictions as a way to raise money.
But most of the time, people are drugged and the organ is removed without their consent: They wake up, and a kidney is missing.
Libya became a major transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. In March, authorities discovered a mass grave with the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the deserts of western Libya.
