“The tragedy of missing migrants has reached a dreadful magnitude”, writes the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in a “Human Rights Comment” published on Thursday 29 September.
Dunja Mijatović reminds Member States of their obligations to take “all necessary measures” to prevent such disappearances and to conduct effective and non-discriminatory investigations when they occur.
Referring to the work of the “Missing Migrants Project” run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Commissioner puts this tragedy into figures: since 2014, almost 25,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean and more than 900 have suffered the same fate while travelling by land or sea within Europe. 277 in the Western Balkans alone, 204 in the English Channel.
Estimated at more than 10,000 by Europol in 2016, the number of unaccompanied minors who went missing after being registered by the authorities in Europe was 18,000 between 2018 and 2020, it adds, citing a survey conducted by “Lost in Europe”, a cross-border journalism project.
Marked by an “inherent invisibility”, these disappearances suffer from a lack of documentation, adds Ms Mijatović, who denounces the absence of an internationally accepted definition of the term “missing migrant”. It is often limited to cases that occur during travel and does not cover those that occur in camps, informal settlements or detention facilities.
The Commissioner recommends the establishment of safe and legal access routes, humanitarian assistance along migration routes, regular review of border management, systematic collection of data related to disappearances, including from families of the disappeared, cooperation with NGOs and international organisations, etc.
“The magnitude of the issue demands immediate action”, warns Dunja Mijatović.
Link to the Human Rights Comment: https://aeur.eu/f/3bo (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)