“The free movement of persons is a fundamental right guaranteed by the EU to its citizens”, recalls the European Commission on its Schengen Area's webpage, “an area without internal borders, an area within which citizens, many non-EU nationals, business people and tourists can freely circulate without being subjected to border checks”. Established in 1995, lauded as “one of the greatest achievements of the EU” by the European Commission, its deadly downside, which only begins to make the news, is still not really faced by european and international organizations. As “Schengen States have also tightened controls at their common external border”, migrants take more and more risks, and thousands of them disappear or die trying to reach european borders.
In the 1990's, UNITED, a Dutch NGO which strengthens a network of 560 organisations from 46 European countries, began documenting what they call “the deadly results of the building of ‘Fortress Europe’”. Its data set, The Fatal Realities of Fortress Europe, estimates that more than 17 306 people, refugees and migrants, died trying to seek asylum in their attempts to reach european's borders since 1993.
Gabriele del Grande, an italian journalist, blogger and human rights activist, launched another data set in 2006, Fortress Europe, with the same purpose, which estimates that “at least 19,144 people have died since 1988 along the european borders”.
In association with datajournalism agency Journalism++, a team of European datajournalists decided to merge, geocode, compare and factcheck those two data sets, with the support of JournalismFund.eu's European Cross-border Grant Programme. Several dozen stories in many different countries have been checked against other sources. Interviews have been conducted with people involved in counting migrants’ deaths. And an extensive litterature review has been carried out on the subject. It has led to fruitful contacts with several NGO and journalists across Europe and beyond.
The team's merged database, browsable on Detective.io, let us discover that, since 2000, the documented death toll of migrants was 50% higher than previously believed, as Del Grande's data set documented 13 683 deaths since 2000, and UNITED's 15 178, but the team's merged & deduplicated database totalizes 23 258 dead and missing people.
The shipwreck on 3 October 2013 which occured near Lampedusa and resulted in the death of 366 migrants, gained a lot of international media attention, although is has been known, for years, that hundreds of migrants drown each year in the Mediterranean sea. A previous datajournalism study of UNITED's data set, made by French news website Owni in in 2011, reported that 11 046 of the 14 307 deaths reported at that time were recorded in Mediterranean, with 9 964 people drowned, among them 857 near Lampedusa since 1993.
Although Lampedusa is monitored by several coastal radars, between 10 and 20 patrol boats of the Coast Guard and Customs Police as well as maritime surveillance aircrafts, our findings reveal today that 3 840 migrants, at least, died near Lampedusa between 2000 and 2013, plus 1 671 on the south of Lampedusa, 978 on the east of Lampedusa, 745 near Malta, 373 in Sicily and 226 in or near Sardinia. In sum, 6 489 men, women, children and babies have been reported as dead or missing while trying to reach Lampedusa since 2000, 7 833 in the Strait of Sicily, 2 267 near the Canary Island, and 1 534 on the Strait of Gibraltar.
Those figures are low estimates, not only because we were not able to check events prior to 2000 (Del Grande's data set figures that 7 065 migrants died or were reported as missings in the Strait of Sicily since 1994), but also because shipwrecks of clandestine transportations are generally hidden to the authorities, and can remain unnoticed. Furthermore, a French senatorial report stressed, in 2012, that between 7 000 and 10 000 people died since 1995 trying to reach Mayotte -one of the overseas department of France, a small island at the north west of Madagascar that is not part of Schengen- from the Comoros, although our database only documents the disappearance of 757 migrants near Mayotte.
Moreover, drownings are just one part of the dehumanization of migrants, as thousands of migrants have died from starvation, exhaustion or thirst in drifting boats or in the desert, from hypothermia, suffocation or frozen to death hiding in trucks, murdered, committed suicide, in detention camps awaiting their deportation, from treatment deprivation by doctors, on minefields, killed by security services or in the home country, which wasn't safe after all etc.
Our investigation reveals another staggering fact : neither Frontex -the European Union agency for external border security, created in 2004-, nor the European Commission, nor the International Maritime Organization -which is the United Nations specialized agency with responsibility for the safety and security of shipping-, had ever tried to face this issue.
Frontex's reports provide detailed statistics about illegal border-crossing, clandestine entries, facilitators and illegal stay, refusals of entry, applications for asylum, document fraud, return decisions issued (and effective returns), but nothing at all about shipwrecks, missing or dead persons. Although Frontex's reports repeatedly mention “victims of human trafficking”, they barely dare to deal with those who lost their lives.
In 2010, Greece, which was facing “an exceptional pressure due to the large number of persons crossing the border irregularly every day”, requested the assistance of Frontex's Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT). A Situational update “on the basis of operational data gathered during the implementation of Operation RABIT” establish that “since June 2, 2010, over 38,000 undocumented persons have been detected crossing the Greek-Turkish land border”, and that “45 people lost their lives trying to cross the Evros River, or at sea in the area of Alexandroupolis”.
The flow of migrants at the beginning of the arab spring let the italian authorities to request assistance from Frontex, which activated Joint Operation Hermes in february 2011. One year later, a situational update on the operation reports that “over 56 000 migrants arrived in Italy, the majority on the small island of Lampedusa”, with 300 boats coming from Tunisia, and 100 from Libya. Although Frontex writes that “last year vessels participating in the Hermes operation saved over 20 000 migrants at sea during search and rescue operations”, it also stresses that, “according to UN sources, over 1500 migrants lost their lives in the Central Mediterranean, making it one of the highest death tolls for many years” (emphasis added), revealing that the agency did not collect any statistics about those fatalities.
Asked about this blindness, an official working with Frontex recalled that Frontex's mission is to fight against illegal immigration, and stressed, off the record : “we collect statistics about migrants; but those people are dead, they are not migrants anymore”.
In june, 2007, Ilkka Laitinen, the Executive Director of Frontex, wrote a open letter, entitled “Frontex - facts and myths”, in order to clarify “some misunderstanding in the European press on the role of Frontex”, notably because “Member States want Frontex to become a search and rescue body” :
Legal advisors could have some problems in explaining why a Community agency should take action in an area that is out of the mandate not only of the agency but also the European Union. The raison d’être of Frontex are not emergency operations but the consistent introduction of well planned regular patrols by Member States. Doctors say that the best intensive care unit cannot replace prophylaxis; I would say that it applies also to borders. Frontex is not and never will be a panacea to problems of illegal migration. The agency with personnel of 82 people and a budget of € 35m cannot take over the duty of hundreds of thousands of border guards in the European Union. Maybe our activities in the Mediterranean do not seem sufficient for some people but we have to act in accordance with the legal mandate we have, and in the fixed financial frames we have, not to mention the human resources and the willingness of the Member States to act together.
That said, the question remains to figure out why Frontex collect statistics on migrants they intercept, or rescue, but never about those they find dead, or identify as missing, as if those people never existed, and as if they were not a problem European institutions should take into account.
The European Commission's European Migration Network (EMN), who “plays a key role in providing policymakers and the wider public with up-to-date, objective, reliable and comparable information on migration and asylum”, whose budget is 6 million euros in 2013 and who collects and analyses statistics on asylum and migration, publishing dozens of reports each year, almost never addressed this issue.
In 2006, a report (.pdf) on Asylum and Migration Statistic from its Italian National Contact Point Annual effectivly qualified the sea as to be a “huge cemetary” :
“But tragedies by land are not less numerous: immigrants travel – and often die – either hidden inside tractor-trailers (running the risk of dying from asphyxia or crushed by the goods), or underneath the trains or even inside the holders of the landing gear of the aircrafts; or crossing mountain border posts, rivers and minefields, being likely to strike down, freeze to death, or simply die of any other accident. In all these cases, the hope to live a better life is what motivate them to face these perils.”
In 2012, the same wrote (.pdf) that, “when the migration flows and the restrictive immigration policies increased, it became a sort of immense cemetery”, and that “hundreds of people (...) have died while travelling hidden inside tractor-trailers (from asphyxia or crushed by the goods), beneath the trains or even in the landing gear of the aircrafts;others died by crossing mountain border posts, rivers and minefields, either struck down, frozen to death, or by any other accident”:
“According to a cautious estimate by Fortress Europe –an organization that documents the death occurred during unauthorised border crossings, there were 18,050 victims, the time period from 1998 through December 2011, of which only 2,251 from the beginning of 2011 (1,400 in the Strait of Sicily in the first 5 months of 2011).
To the tragedies occurring in the Mediterranean Sea (the so called Mare nostrum) we should add those which took place in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of the Canary Islands, or while crossing the Strait of Gibraltar towards Spain, which involved immigrants departing from the coastlines of North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Senegal).”
Although the EMN's reports consistently refersto “victims of THB” (the accronym for Trafficking in Human Beings), it has never launched any study on those who die or disappear from this traffic.
The only estimates relative to migrants' deaths it ever mentioned lies in the final report (.pdf) of its Italian National Contact, in 2006, in a chapter dedicated to the programme regarding the assisted voluntary return of vulnerable groups :
“According to the statistics up until mid 2006 a total of 571 persons took advantage of it for assistance with voluntary return. Nevertheless, in 385 cases it was for the return of the corpses of migrant workers who died in the Italian territory.”
The International Maritime Organization is not as blind, but almost deaf, mute and one-eyed, although it does have some statistics. In december 2000, it's Maritime Safety Committee urged Governments and international organizations “to promptly report all unsafe practices associated with the trafficking or transport of illegal migrants by sea they are aware of”. Each year, IMO has since published two reports documenting hundred of events, available on its online database (free membership required).
Its factsheet (.pdf) about "Stowaways/Illegal Migrants/Treatment of Persons Rescued at Sea", updated in may, 2013, reports that “the total number of incidents related to unsafe practices associated with the trafficking or transport of migrants by sea reported to the Organization for the period between 1 January 1999 and 20 February 2013 is 2,157 involving 103,958 illegal migrants”. But the review of each of its 23 biannual reports on “Unsafe practices” also reveal that they only focus on rescued people, whithout almost never mentioning those who disappeared : only 20 dead and 8 missings persons are reported, as if migrants at risk were only (and massively) rescued, but never disappeared, died, nor drowned.
That said, two IMO reports provides some statistics. The first one (.pdf), a “Report on action taken in emergencies involving "Pateras" (small boats)”, written in 2006, reveals that the spanish Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCC) rescued 27 165 migrants, and counted 335 dead et 362 missing from 1991 to 2005. This is the sole national report especially trying to face this issue.
The second one, entitled “Selected Distress at Sea Incidents involving Refugees and Migrants in 2011”, provided by the UNHCR and “based on desk research of publicly available media sources conducted between August and October 2011”, lists 39 events, including 23 in the Mediterranean, which led to 192 deaths and between 341 and 421 missings at European borders.
On its webpage dedicated to Illegal Migrants, the IMO recognizes that “generally the migrants transported by sea travel without documents, in crammed conditions, facing severe weather at sea and often even death“”, and recalls that “governments are encouraged to take all the possible measures to prevent the use of unsafe boats to transport migrants endangering their life” :
“As the exodus of migrants continues in different parts of the world and the need to rescue of persons becomes ever more evident, as desperate refugees travel in unsafe conditions, the Organization is committed to cooperate in all possible ways to create an international framework to encourage States and the whole shipping industry to provide assistance to persons in distress at sea and to deliver them to a place of safety, reducing the risk of losing lives in maritime incidents.”
The IMO also stresses it “has worked closely with Member States and international organizations to ensure cooperation and coordination which are essential and at the core of rescue operations and that responsibilities are being taken accordingly by all parties concerned”... which resulted in the publication of a 12 pages leaflet (.pdf) co-written by the UNHCR, “Rescue at Sea, A guide to principles and practice as applied to migrants and refugees”, which recalls the “relevant legal provisions and practical procedures to ensure the prompt disembarkation of survivors of rescue operations”, whithout ever adressing the lack of statistics from member states and international organizations.
Asked to know why Spain did not update its statistics, and why no other reports were ever made in other countries (especially Italy, Greece, Turkey, or France with Mayotte, where we know that thousands of migrants died or disappeared), the IMO responded it “recognizes that the data set is not complete”, explaining its organization was “dependent on information uploaded by Member Governments”. Its 2013 factsheet about stowaways actually stated that “in 2011 the reports were provided by just four Member States: Canada, Greece, Italy and Turkey, and in 2012 only two Member States provided information: Italy and Greece”.
The Europen Union has allocated 1 820 million euros over the period 2007-2013 to its External Borders Fund (EBF), created in order to establish solidarity between Schengen countries, as investments made by those situated at the external frontiers of the Union “can be very large due to significant migratory pressure at their borders”. But those fundings are mostly, if not only, dedicated to the “modernisation of surveillance systems and development of IT systems for external border controls”:
“The eligible measures under the EBF include border crossing infrastructures and related buildings, infrastructures, buildings and systems required for surveillance between border crossing points and protection against illegal crossing of the external border, operating equipment (including terminals VIS, SIS), means of transport for the control of external borders, equipment for real time exchange of information between relevant authorities, ICT systems (including VIS, SIS), training and secondment programmes and pilot projects and studies.”
Frontex, whose budget was multiplied by almost 20 in its 7 first years (from 6,2 to 85 M€ from 2004 to 2013, with a peak of 118 M€ in 2011), will thus be assisted by a new “European external border surveillance system” (EUROSUR), officialy launched in december, 2013 anddescribed by Cecilia Malmström following october's Lampedusa tragedy as a “_new tool will help Member States to better track, identify and rescue small vessels at sea thanks to better coordination between national authorities, appropriate channels of communication and improved surveillance technology”.
Although EUROSUR, whose budget is estimated at €244 millions for 2014-2020, has been designed, in 2008, to “reduce the number of illegal immigrants who enter the European Union undetected (and) the number of deaths of illegal immigrants by saving more lives at sea (and) increase the internal security of the EU as a whole by contributing to the prevention of cross-border crime”, Malmström's declaration stunned many of the people working with Frontex, as one of those explains:
“EUROSUR is already beta-tested by 6 countries (Spain, Frace, Italy, Finland, Poland and Slovakia) since december, 2011. Everybody was a little bit surprised, and we don't really see how EUROSUR, which is not completly ready, could help save lives : the goal is to monitor everything than happens at european borders, and the system let us share with others informations about vessels and migrants we've previoulsy intercept or identify.
But Search & Rescue has nothing to do with EUROSUR : their boats don't have geolocalization systems, we can't locate their mobile phones until they phone us, satellite and GPS systems are not adapted...”
In october 2013, following the Lampedusa tragedy, a press release from the European Parliament was pleased to announce that EUROSUR “will enable member states to share real-time images and data on developments at the EU's external borders”. But a detailed memo from the European Commission, in november, as the resolution adopted on october, 10, as the presentation of EUROSUR on Frontex's website emphasize on “near-real sharing of border-related data” which, according to an official working with Frontex we've interviewed, is not yet the case :
“Although it's not a "real time" system, EUROSUR let us focus our Search & Rescue means according to the privileged sea lanes.”
Ironically, the same official noted that the concept of “illegal immigrants)” does not exist while at sea, but only on mainland.
Since 1995, European institutions spent billions of euros fighting illegal immigration, collecting thousands of statistics about “victims of THB”, but without never trying to figure or estimates its death toll, nor how to deal with those who, trying to cross Fortress Europe by the sea, are not “illegal immigrants”, but refugees who risk their life.