Nadia McDonald
The Association for Human Rights in Andalucia has found that 40% of people who lost their lives on their migratory journey to Spain since 2003 occurred during a three-year period from 2020 to 2022. The total number of deaths during that time amounts to more than 5,000.
The data presented in the annual Frontera Sur report reveals that travel from Africa to Spain on precarious boats is becoming more dangerous with more bodies washing up on the Spanish coastline.
In 2022 five people a day lost their lives at the Spanish southern border. 70% of the deaths happened on route to the Canary Islands, the most dangerous crossing point.
The report explains that this loss of human life is not an accidental occurrence but rather the ‘result of hardline migratory policies which seek to seal the southern border by increased militarization of crossing routes, the outsourcing of immigration controls, criminalization of migration and depersonalization of victims’.
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