More than 10,000 migrants died in 2024 trying to reach Spain by sea, aid group says

This photograph shows a boat that arrived with 41 people on board, including two minors, on the Canary island of Tenerife in July 2023. Desiree Martin/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Desiree Martin/AFP via Getty Images

SEVILLE, Spain — The migration route that connects West African nations with Spain had its deadliest year on record, according to a report by the aid group Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders.) Nearly 10,000 migrants disappeared at sea in 2024 while trying to reach the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago located about 70 miles off of the closest location on the coast of the African continent.

The extensive Monitoring the Right to Life 2024 full report covers the various migration routes that connect the African continent with Spain. The group's findings shed light on migrant deaths at sea, which continue to be difficult to track down, given its nature.

Altogether, 10,457 deaths were recorded from Jan. 1 until Dec. 15, 2024. That includes routes connecting the North African coast to the Spanish mainland. But the vast majority of deaths were found in the Atlantic route, which connects a number of West African nations to the Canary Islands. According to Caminando Fronteras, the Atlantic route, with 9,757 deaths in 2024, remains the "deadliest in the world."

While Senegal had been the main point of departure for migrants in past years, this year Mauritania became the main departure point to the Canary Islands, a route that led to 6,829 deaths in 2024, according to the report. The distance between Mauritania and the farthest island in the Canary archipelago is nearly 1,000 miles. Senegal and Gambia continue to be a launching point for migrants, with this route accounting for 2,127 deaths.

Migrants on a cayuco boat arrive to disembark at La Restinga port on the Canary island of El Hierro, in September. Antonio Sempere/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Antonio Sempere/AFP via Getty Images

The rising numbers come despite the European Union's efforts to curb migration by working with countries of origin, such as Mauritania and Senegal. Earlier this year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Mauritania along with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and announced hundreds of millions in funding to help the country develop key economic sectors and curb migration.

Spain's interior ministry says more than 57,738 migrants reached Spain by boat from Jan. 1 to Dec. 15 this year, making 2024 a record year. That number continues to increase, with more than 500 migrants arriving in the Canary Islands on Christmas Day, according to authorities.

Spain's coalition government, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Socialist Party, has been in negotiations with regional governments to determine the way underaged migrants are relocated from the Canary Islands to the other areas in the Spanish mainland. This has become a contentious political debate, with the far-right calling for a boycott to any talks having to do with irregular migration.

Since 2002, Caminando Fronteras has compiled figures from a network of families, and official government statistics, to come up with statistics on migration routes from Africa into Europe. The aid group's mission is to "fight to ensure that human rights are respected in these non-places by working closely with people and communities on the move."

Caminando Fronteras also works to alert authorities when vessels carrying migrants are in danger. A telephone hotline connects the aid organization to those at sea. Despite their collaboration with rescue services, the aid's group "Monitoring the Right to Life 2024" report denounces, as the main reason for the recorded deaths, "the omission of the duty to rescue, the prioritization of migration control over the right to life, the externalization of borders in countries without adequate resources, the inaction and arbitrariness in rescues."

Helena Maleno is founder and spokesperson of Caminando Fronteras. She says the development of dangerous migration routes is directly connected to EU deterrence policies, "which increasingly expel people towards more dangerous migration routes," Maleno says.

Maleno blames European nations for what she sees as the development of policies that result in the diversion of responsibility for these migrant deaths at sea.

"We find the omission of the duty of rescue, with delays in the activation of rescue search means — even when authorities are provided with the geolocated position for distressed vessels. Migrants can be left to die, with the outsourcing of the responsibility to third countries such as Mauritania, Algeria, or Morocco."

Maleno also points to the number of children among those who died at sea: "This year, the number of children and adolescents who have died, more than 1,500, is striking." According to the aid group's report, 1,538 children died this year trying to reach Spain. The report also counts 421 women among the dead.

A group of migrants react to coming ashore after a boat from Senegal, with 85 migrant people on board, arrived at La Restinga port in the Canary Islands in August. Jose Antonio Sempere/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Jose Antonio Sempere/AFP via Getty Images

The yearly reports by Maleno's Caminando Fronteras have come to provide a rare glimpse into the size of the tragedy of migrants who never make it to the coast of Spain. Caminando Fronteras taps into a vast network of migrants, and their families in their countries of origin, to make an assessment of those who died at sea, accounted for by the authorities, and those who are never accounted for. Maleno says that the organization's work is making victims visible despite the "criminalization suffered by migrants" which she says results in "migrant families seeing their rights denied."

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said that his government's migration initiatives are working, and that "welcoming those who come from abroad is not just an obligation under international law, but also an essential way to guarantee the prosperity of the nation and the sustainability of the welfare system."

By contrast, Helena Maleno, of Caminando Fronteras, compares Spanish migration to that of other European countries: "Increasingly these policies are being implemented on the different borders from the central Mediterranean, managed by Meloni, to Greece and the Spanish State. There is no difference," she said, referring to Italy's prime minister, Georgia Meloni.