Yemen - Details of at least three fatal migrant shipwrecks off Africa since December 5th continue to concern IOM.

Reports of as many as 100 migrants losing their lives off African coasts near Spain, Italy and Yemen demonstrate how winter’s approach has not significantly curbed the number of migrants seeking safety, nor altered the lethal nature of many of these voyages.

It was initially reported out of Yemen last Sunday that 70 migrants died when their boat capsized in rough weather off the coast of Taizz governorate near Bab El-Mandeb strait. However, in meeting with IOM, local authorities reported that 24 migrants were aboard and are now assumed to have drowned.

Migrants often take unseaworthy and overcrowded boats that smugglers operate as part of an increasingly organized transnational criminal network. Every year, tens of thousands of desperate migrants and refugees risk their lives and embark on the dangerous journey across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden into Yemen in search of better lives.

Since January 2014 in fact, it is estimated that over 70,000 migrants and refugees arrived from the Horn of Africa; while over 250 migrants died at sea. Alarmingly, the number of deaths at sea in 2014 continues to rise and has reached unprecedented levels since 2010.

“The deaths of these migrants and others who will attempt to flee armed conflict, poverty and drought calls for the immediate strengthening and capacity building of regional and national law enforcement institutions, to save lives and to effectively prosecute criminal elements engaged in human smuggling and trafficking in the region,” said IOM Yemen Chief of Mission Nicoletta Giordano.

Between July and November 2014, IOM Yemen has provided life-saving assistance to over 5,000 stranded migrants, with over 4,457 receiving medical assistance from mobile health teams and at IOM migrant centres in Bab el-Mandeb, Basateen (Aden), Sana’a and Haradh.

Approximately 800 Ethiopian migrants – nearly 150 of whom were unaccompanied minors – were provided with voluntary return assistance.

“It is essential that the international community does more to increase awareness and provide the resources needed to boost the offshore rescue and onshore protection capacity of humanitarian organizations and government authorities in Yemen,” added Giordano.

IOM’s Rome office reported last Friday that an incident off the Italian coast left 17 people – 15 men, 1 woman and 1 child – dead when their rubber dinghy foundered en route from Libya. Some 75 migrants, all from sub-Saharan Africa, were rescued.

The 17 bodies recovered were brought by an Italian navy ship to Italy’s Porto Empedocle on Friday. Since then, IOM has begun to investigate reports that more lives were lost in the incident, according to Flavio Di Giacomo of IOM Rome.

Few details are available from an incident off Almeria, Spain, where 28 migrants were rescued on Friday night. Among those rescued were witnesses who said that as many as 23 men, women and children were swept away by the waves.

The migrants are believed to have departed from Morocco on a small craft, whose engine cut out. That led to scuffles on the vessel and possibly a panic. As of Monday, a three-day search of the area by Spanish authorities did not lead to the recovery of any bodies or signs of migrants adrift at sea.

IOM figures show that this year over 3,200 migrants have been recorded as missing, presumed drowned on voyages between Africa and Europe, in addition to the 250 migrant deaths that have been recorded on sea routes connecting Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. 

For more information, please contact

Dax Bennett Roque

IOM Yemen

Tel. +967 410 568/572

Email: droque@iom.int

Or

Flavio Di Giacomo

IOM Italy

Tel: +39 347 089 8996

Email: fdigiacomo@iom.int