Migrants: 1,100 Children Died In The Mediterranean In 10 Years

Catastrophic data regarding migration in the Mediterranean was published by the non-profit organization Save The Children. According to this NGO, from 2014 to the present day, which is almost 10 years, 28,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea, including 1,143 minors.

“People fleeing war, persecution, violence, extreme poverty, humanitarian crises continue to risk their lives by relying on smugglers, with no legal and safe routes to reach Europe,” said Raffaella Milano, the director of the program Save the Children Italy-Europe, quoted by the Italian news agency AGI. “They often lose their lives in this sinister lottery, which crossing of one of the deadliest routes in the world actually is. We will never get tired of demanding the creation of legal and safe channels to reach Europe and to accept the shared responsibility from Italy and other European Union member states.”

The publication of these tragic figures comes on the anniversary of the crash off the coast of Lampedusa on October 3, 2013, which killed 368 people. Little or nothing has changed in protecting the migrant cause since then. The figures reflect an increase in the number of missing children. While in 2014 the share of minors in the total number of dead and missing was 1%, today it is already 4.3%. In 2023 alone, more than 100 minors died or went missing in the Mediterranean. During these 10 years, more than 112 thousand unaccompanied minors arrived in Italy by sea, of which 11,600 from January 2023 to the present day.