London: The International Organization for Migration has conducted in-depth research to understand the challenges faced by families searching for loved ones who have gone missing during their migration journey, including people lost on their way to the UK.
The Missing Migrants Project began in 2014. Since then, over 47,000 migrant deaths and disappearances have been recorded by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) project, half of them in the Mediterranean Sea.
The vast majority of missing migrants have never been found. Among those that have been, few have been identified. The aim of the research is to give a voice to the family members of those lost in the course of their migration. According to records collected by IOM’s Missing Migrants Project and the Institute of Race Relations, nearly 300 deaths were recorded between 1999 and 2020 along the northern coasts of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, in the English Channel, or shortly after crossing into the UK. However, the number of migrants who have gone missing en route to the UK is likely to be significantly higher than the data collected suggests.
“Currently, a very small number of actors can be found in the UK that provide support services to families of missing migrants, and their work continues to be inhibited by several factors, not least the present friction in the UK between the need for humanitarian responses to migration matters and the push for more stringent immigration control approaches,” IOM’s UK country report reads. “There is still a lack of knowledge and understanding about the experiences of missing migrants and their families, within relevant sectors and the wider UK population.”
Read more: Hannah Shewan Stevens, Each Other, https://rb.gy/nhper6
