Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The issue of missing migrants in the Southern Africa region is a complex and multi-faceted problem that is not well documented or understood. While there is limited information available, migrants in the region face a range of challenges and risks that can lead to death or disappearance. One of the main drivers of migration in the region is economic opportunity, with many people seeking work and a better standard of living. However, migrants are often vulnerable to exploitation, including labour and human rights abuses, human smuggling and trafficking in persons on the Southern Migratory Corridor, which can result in them becoming missing or at worse, dead. Unfortunately, comprehensive and reliable statistics on missing migrants in the Southern Africa region are difficult to come by due to the irregular nature of mobility patterns by this category of migrants as well as the lack of documentation and reporting on the issue.
Since 2014, when IOM’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) started documenting fatalities on migration routes worldwide, there have been at least 750 migrant deaths in the Southern Africa region, of which 65 occurred in 2022. Due to the serious challenges of documenting migrant fatalities in the region, this is only a minimum estimate of the real number of lives lost and should be considered indicative. The most common cause of death is drowning, accounting for 63 per cent of all recorded fatalities, followed by vehicle accidents or deaths linked to hazardous transport (14%) and accidental deaths (9%). There is also little information available on the identity of the individuals whose deaths have been recorded, which translates into poorquality data in terms of sex and age disaggregation. Of all recorded migrant fatalities in the region, 171 of the victims were men, 17 were women, and 18 were minors. The top countries of origin of the victims are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, accounting for 42 per cent of all deaths, followed by Ethiopia (21%) and Comoros (7%).
This annual briefing on migrant deaths and disappearances in the Southern Africa region provides a contextual insight on the available data on migrant deaths and disappearances that occurred from January to December 2022, based on IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. The briefing highlights the regional realities, country specific incidents and plausible factors contributing to migrant deaths and disappearances in the region in 2022. Given the extensive data challenges in the region, this briefing also highlights ways to improve such data and provide humanitarian assistance and policy recommendations in the Southern Africa region by the international community, Member States of SADC and other relevant partners dealing (in)directly with migrant deaths and disappearances.