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(FILES) Wooden crosses made with the remains of boats used by migrants to cross the Mediterranean sea are seen in the cemetry where victims of shipwrecks are buried, on the island of Lampedusa, on 25 September 2023. More than 2,500 migrants died or went missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2023, a UN High Commissioner for Refugees official said on September 28, 2023. "By September 24, over 2,500 people were accounted as dead or missing in 2023 alone," Ruven Menikdiwela, director of the UNHCR New York office, told the Security Council. That number marked a large increase over the 1,680 dead or missing migrants in the same period in 2022. (Photo by Tiziana FABI / AFP)
The number of migrants who died or went missing trying to cross the Mediterranean this summer was three times the number seen in the same period last year, the UN said Friday.
Between June and August, at least 990 people died or went missing in the dangerous central Mediterranean route between northern Africa and Europe, compared to 334 deaths over the same months in 2022, the UN's children's agency UNICEF said.
The agency gave no separate number for children dying during the crossings, but said that 11,600 unaccompanied minors had been among the migrants trying to get to Italy on makeshift vessels between January and September, up 60 percent from the first nine months of 2022.
"The Mediterranean has become a cemetery for children and their future," UNICEF coordinator Regina De Dominicis said.
"The tragic toll of children dying in search of asylum and security in Europe is the result of political choices and a defective migration system," she said.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2,500 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean between January 1 and September 24, 50 percent more than in the same period last year.
