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A 'cayuco' hollowed out wooden boat with 150 people left Senegal to reach Spain, but on 26 October this year it raised the alarm. The vessel was drifting and they were heading "towards the west, a long way from the coast, where these boats disappear", according to the report 'Right to Life 2024' by the observatory Caminando Fronteras. It took Spain and Morocco two days to coordinate the rescue operation. Basically, to decide who would take charge. On the 29th, Mauritania joined in, but none of the three countries had contacted the castaways, who reached the African coast on the 31st, pushed by the currents, without anyone rescuing them. In those days of waiting, 28 people had died and 122 had been rescued. Two bodies were found on the boat. The other bodies were thrown overboard.
In 2024, the seas between Europe and Africa became a mass grave, with 10,457 people of 28 nationalities killed, including 421 women, according to the NGO. The worst months were April and May. "There is an increase (of deaths) of more than 58 per cent over the previous year. If the daily average in 2023 was 18 victims, in 2024 the average rises to 30 people a day," it said.
Of all of them, "the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands continues to be the most lethal worldwide". The rising numbers are due to the "notable increase in departures from Mauritania", which accounted for seven out of ten boats. "Zodiacs, as the called by migrants, are extremely fragile and very dangerous to navigate in the Atlantic, where sea conditions are more severe than in the Mediterranean," the NGO continued.
A voice escaped from one of them, recorded in the report: "We are sinking, one of the tyres is completely deflated, there are people already in the water, we are holding them so that they don't get separated from the boat (...). We have been communicating for hours, you have the position, why doesn't anyone come? We have called everyone (...) We are not going to hold on any longer, we will all go to the bottom". This year Caminando Fronteras recorded 131 similar cases, which then disappeared without trace.
There are three main routes. The Mauritanian, the Senegal-Gambia and the Mediterranean routes. On the first, which is the busiest, "mixed inflatable boats with mostly Maghrebi and sub-Saharan people in transit, mostly from West Africa" set sail "further and further away from the Canary Islands, their target", which led to a "significant" increase in tragedies at the end of this year.
The NGO also documented that three of the events occurred due to "situations of violence on the boats, provoked by the extreme conditions in which these people found themselves and resulted in shipwrecks that cost the lives of 47 people". In this itinerary, 110 "tragedies with 6,829 victims and 79 boats completely disappeared" were recorded.
The second route, off the coasts of Senegal and Gambia, decreased "considerably since 2023", with less traffic in the first half of the year. Here there were 2,127 victims and eight shipwrecks.
The third, the one that crosses Mediterranean waters, is on the rise, with new routes, such as the one that seeks to reach the Balearic Islands, "the most dangerous area of the route", instead of heading to the central Mediterranean from Algiers. "The consolidation of the Balearic route has also seen an increase in the arrival of migrant children on the islands, with profiles of adolescents travelling alone, but also with young boys and girls mostly accompanied by their mothers," said the study, which totals 517 victims and 26 lost boats.
Another crossing within the Mediterranean is the Strait of Gibraltar, where "many of the young people and adolescents come from the north of Morocco" and hear the call to cross to Europe, because "social media networks play an important role". "The crossings are very dangerous and are even made with makeshift craft, at best, young people and teenagers wear wetsuits. The deaths are strongly related to the very precarious means used". In this crossing, there were 110 victims, a fifth of whom were minors.
Finally, 73 people died trying to reach the Alboran, due to the "great precariousness and lack of protection". The NGO claims that many of these lives were not saved because of the "failure to provide proper assistance" and the "stigmatisation" and "criminalisation" of the victims when they try to reach Europe.
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