BARCELONA, Spain: More than 29,000 people have died on migration journeys to Europe since 2019, with 5,000 perishing in the last two years, the International Organization for Migration said in a report issued Tuesday.
The Missing Migrants Project of the UN agency warned of “increasing numbers of deaths seen on routes across the Mediterranean, on land borders to Europe and within the continent.”
According to its report, the deadliest migration route continues to be the Central Mediterranean, where 2,836 migrants and refugees have died since January 2021 attempting to reach Italy or Malta by crossing mainly from Libya and Tunisia.
The second deadliest is the Atlantic route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, where more than 1,500 deaths were recorded since 2021.
But the project’s researchers acknowledged their tally was likely an undercount given the difficulty of collecting and confirming information on “invisible shipwrecks” — boats that vanish at sea without witnesses.
Rising numbers of deaths also were observed in other areas that border Europe, as well as in Greece, the Western Balkans and the English Channel, according to the report.
Many of the deaths “could have been prevented by prompt and effective assistance to migrants in distress,” IOM’s Missing Migrants Project said in a statement.
For the first time, the project released statistics on deaths related to so-called pushbacks, or forced expulsions, by European authorities. It counted 252 deaths based on reports from survivors.
Pushbacks are unlawful according to both international and EU law as they violate the right to seek asylum and a principle prohibiting the return of anyone to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture or a threat to life.
The report says 97 of the pushback-related deaths were documented in the Central Mediterranean, 70 in the Eastern Mediterranean, 58 on the Turkey-Greece land border, 23 in the Western Mediterranean and 4 on the Belarus-Poland border.
“Such cases are nearly impossible to verify in full due to the lack of transparency, lack of access, and the highly politicized nature of such events, and as such these figures are likely an underestimate of the true number of deaths,” the report states.
More than 29,000 migrants to Europe died since 2014
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More than 29,000 migrants to Europe died since 2014
- The deadliest migration route continues to be the Central Mediterranean
- The project's researchers acknowledged their tally was likely an undercount given the difficulty of collecting and confirming information on “invisible shipwrecks”
EU parliament approves 90-bn-euro loan for Ukraine amid US cuts
- awmakers voted by 458 to 140 in favor of the loan, intended to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial needs for 2026 and 2027
The EU parliament on Wednesday approved a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine, providing a financial lifeline to cash-strapped Kyiv four years into Russia’s invasion.
Lawmakers voted by 458 to 140 in favor of the loan, intended to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial needs for 2026 and 2027 and backed by the EU’s common budget — after plans to tap frozen Russian central bank assets fell by the wayside.
Military aid to Ukraine hit its lowest level in 2025 as the US pulled funding, leaving Europe almost alone in footing the bill and averting a complete collapse, the Kiel Institute said Wednesday.
Kyiv's allies allocated 36 billion euros ($42.9 billion) in military aid in 2025, down 14 percent from 41.1 billion euros the previous year, according to Kiel, which tracks military, financial and humanitarian assistance pledged and delivered to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion.
Military aid in 2025 was even lower than in 2022, despite the invasion not taking place until February 24 that year.
US aid came to a complete halt with President Donald Trump's return to the White House in early 2025.
Washington provided roughly half of all military assistance between 2022 and 2024.
European countries have thus made a significant effort to plug the gap, increasing their collective allocation by 67 percent in 2025 compared with the 2022-2024 average.
Without that effort, the US cuts could have been even more damaging, the institute argued.
However, the think tank points to "growing disparities" among European contributors, with Northern and Western European countries accounting for around 95 percent of military aid.
The institute calculated that Northern European countries (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden) provided 33 percent of European military aid in 2025, despite accounting for only eight percent of the combined GDP of European donor countries.
Southern Europe, which accounts for 19 percent of the combined GDP of European donors, contributed just three percent.
To help fill the gap left by the United States, NATO launched the PURL programme, under which European donors purchased US weapons for Ukraine, worth 3.7 billion euros in 2025.
Kiel called the initiative a "notable development", which had enabled the acquisition of Patriot air-defense batteries and HIMARS multiple-launch rocket systems.
European allies are also increasingly placing orders with Ukraine's own defence industry, following a trend started by Denmark in 2024.
War-torn Ukraine's defence production capacity has "grown by a factor of 35" since 2022, according to Kiel, but Kyiv lacks the funds to procure enough weapons to keep its factories working at full capacity.
Orders from 11 European donor countries helped bridge that gap last year.
In the second half of 2025, 22 percent of weapons purchases for Ukraine were procured domestically, a record high.
