Migrant deaths hit record number in 2024, UN agency says
Nearly 9,000 people died last year trying to cross borders, the United Nations agency for migration says.
The death toll set a new grim record for the fifth year in a row. The number of deaths on migratory routes has more than doubled since 2020.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 8,938 migrant deaths in 2024. The real death toll is likely much higher given that many deaths go unreported or undocumented, the IOM said in a statement on Friday.
'The rise of deaths is terrible in and of itself, but the fact that thousands remained unidentified each year is even more tragic,' Julia Black, coordinator of the IOM's Missing Migrants Project, said in the statement.
The IOM's deputy director general for operations, Ugochi Daniels, said: 'The increase in deaths across so many regions in the world shows why we need an international, holistic response that can prevent further tragic loss of life.'
'Behind every number is a human being, someone for whom the loss is devastating,' he added.
Asia was the region with the most reported fatalities with 2,788, followed by the Mediterranean Sea with 2,452 and Africa with 2,242. Final data are not yet in for the Americas, but at least 1,233 deaths (including 341 in the Caribbean) occurred in 2024.
At least 233 migrants lost their lives in Europe and 174 in the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, a new record.
According to the IOM, migrants are all people who leave their place of residence for any reason, for any length of time, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Some seek asylum because they are fleeing war or violence.
News of the record death toll comes days after the agency announced it was suspending many 'lifesaving' programmes around the world and firing hundreds of employees due to United States aid cuts, impacting millions of vulnerable migrants and refugees worldwide.
The Geneva-based IOM is one of several groups helping displaced people that have been hit by major US aid cuts, forcing it to scale back or shutter programmes, which it said will have a severe impact on migrants.
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That has made it hard for social justice crusaders looking to support a projection that better represents the Global South. One cartographer's claims, though, shook the cartography world in 1973, causing an outpouring of condemnation on the one hand, and on the other, a loyal cult following. German activist Arno Peters declared his Peters Projection as the 'only' precise map, and the true alternative to the Mercator model. Peters, whose parents had been imprisoned by Nazis and who focused on social inequalities as a journalist and academic criticised the Mercator projection as 'Euro-centred'. The fervour with which he and his supporters promoted the projection as a scientific feat and a social justice breakthrough bordered on what some called propaganda. It caused concerned groups like the United States National Council of Churches to take notice and immediately adopt the map. Critics, though, were quick to call out Peters on two things. The map, observers pointed out, was only distorted differently: Where the Mercator projection makes areas near the poles appear much larger, the Peters projection relatively represents accurate sizes throughout, but slightly stretches areas near the equator vertically, and areas near the poles horizontally. 'There was also the fact that this map had already been presented by another cartographer decades ago,' Braun said, explaining the second problem. Scottish scientist James Gall indeed first published an identical projection in a science journal in 1855, but it went unnoticed. There is no proof, some researchers say, that Peters outrightly plagiarised Gall, but critics say his failure to credit the earlier researcher is still problematic. In 2016, the debate resurfaced with renewed vigour after public schools in the US city of Boston switched to what many now refer to as the 'Gall-Peters' projection. Officials said the move was part of a three-year effort to 'decolonise the curriculum'. Teachers said they were amazed to see students questioning their view of the world after the switch. However, many experts and map enthusiasts were annoyed by the fact that Boston chose Peters, and as such, gave the projection renewed relevance. Al Jazeera reached out to the Boston Public Schools (BPS) for comment. Amid the Boston schools' drama, one group of researchers decided they'd had enough of Peters and set out to do something. Cartographer Bernard Jenny, who teaches immersive visualisation at Australia's Monash University, said he was approached by Tom Patterson, a retired cartographer with the UN National Parks, for the task. Together with software engineer Bojan Savric, the team in 2018 created an equal area map they called the 'Equal Earth' projection. That version, which sees Africa expand impressively, is increasingly seen as the closest thing to a perfect area map. It's the same one Ogundairo's team is pushing for. 'But that's maybe a slightly pretentious name,' Jenny laughed over a Zoom call, explaining that Equal Earth is still not a perfect representation of the Earth. 'We were just tired of the Peters resurgence and wondered why people would go with that when it's not even the best in terms of anything,' he new projection tries to correct the Robinson projection, created in 1963 by American Arthur H Robinson. Many scientists use Robinson's map because it is more visually balanced, although it compromises on area, size and scale, and particularly enlarges areas close to the north and south poles. 'We tried to come up with a version of Robinson that does not distort area,' Jenny explained. 'So we stretched it in a way such that the different areas are not enlarged or shrunken. So Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa on the globe, and it's also 14 times smaller on the Equal Earth map.' Jenny said the team never set out specifically to correct some of the most highlighted errors of the Mercator projection. Subconsciously, though, he said, they knew they wanted their map to better represent historically distorted regions like Africa. 'I would guess any reasonable geographer would support that idea,' the scientist said. Equal Earth rose in popularity after a NASA scientist saw it online right after it was published, and the organisation immediately switched to it. The World Bank, too, has picked it up. The institution, since 2013, has experimented with different projections, including the Robinson map, but in 2024 settled on the Equal Earth map. 'The World Bank Group is committed to ensuring accurate representation of all people, on all platforms,' a spokesperson told Al Jazeera. Progress is slow but steady, Ogundairo of Africa No Filter said. Prominent organisations changing their stances means a universal pivot is possible, she said. Yet, there's much more work to be done by Africans, she added. Just as Mercator painted an image that prominently represented his part of the world, Africans, too, need to lead the way in pushing for what they want, Ogundairo said. One missing factor is that Africans have not insisted enough on change, in her view. It's why her campaign is also urging African countries and the African Union to be particular about how they are represented on the map. 'It's always going to start with us,' Ogundairo said. 'Unless you learn to tell your story, someone else will tell it for you. We need to say, regardless of why they choose to do whatever it is they did, we see the truth. This is the story we want to tell now. This is how we want to show up visually on a map.'
