Thousands of migrants have died after suffering “extreme” abuse while crossing Africa, a report released yesterday by the UN said, estimating that 72 people perish each month on the continent’s routes.
The thousands lost at sea while trying to cross from Africa to Europe have received coverage, but a new report found that routes from West and East Africa up toward the Mediterranean can be equally perilous.
Titled On This Journey, No One Cares If You Live or Die, the report published jointly by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Danish Refugee Council’s Mixed Migration Centre details the horrific realities that many migrants face along the way.
Most migrants making such journeys experience or witness “unspeakable brutality and inhumanity” by smugglers, traffickers, militias and sometimes state actors, the UNHCR said.
In 2018 and last year alone, at least 1,750 people died, corresponding to an average of 72 a month or more than two deaths per day, “making it one of the most deadly routes for refugees and migrants in the world,” the report said.
“For too long, the harrowing abuses experienced by refugees and migrants along these overland routes have remained largely invisible,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.
The report documents “killings and widespread violence of the most brutal nature, perpetrated against desperate people fleeing war, violence and persecution,” he said.
Nearly a third of those who die along these overland routes tried to cross the Sahara Desert.
Others perished in the south of war-ravaged Libya, while another deadly route crosses the Central African Republic and Mali.
Those who survive are often left severely traumatised.
This is particularly true for the many who pass through Libya, where random killings, torture, forced labor and beatings are widespread, the report said.
About one-third of those who reported witnessing or surviving sexual violence said it had occurred in more than one location.
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