2016 witnessed a large scale death of refugees. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 4,812 people have died on the Mediterranean in 2016. The death toll in 2016 has increased 20 percent more than last year.
Almost 7,189 migrants and refugees around the world have died this year, Al Jazeera reported.
“This is the numbers we have of people who are reported to have died, but there are many more who have died lonely deaths, by themselves, in the deserts and in the oceans,” Al Jazeera quoted IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle as saying.
“They [migrants and refugees] are leaving in a clandestine way, they’re leaving without papers, and they’re leaving in small and dangerous boats. Quite often these boats sink without a trace and nobody actually knows about them,” he added.
An average of 20 refugees died each day while seeking asylum in foreign countries. The complex nature of refugee crisis made it difficult for organisation or government to keep an accurate count of the dead and missing.
According to the European Union border control agency, the number of refugees arrived in Europe have declined sharply in 2016 as only 3,50,000 people arrived in the European Union compared to more than 1 million people arrived in 2015.
Executive director of the Frontex border agency Fabrice Leggeri told media on Saturday that about 180,000 people arrived via Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean, while 170,000 reached the continent across the central Mediterranean route from Libya and Egypt.
The deal made between Turkey and EU reduced the number of migrants from east, but the migration from northern parts of Africa rose 30 percent, Leggeri said to a German daily.
