Seeking a just life, 81,000 migrants have died or disappeared in over a decade; over half of them not even identified

When they decide to leave their homes, they are, in effect, signing their own death certificates. Such is their desperation that thousands of migrants from dozens of countries risk treacherous sea crossings, navigate river-crossed tropical forests, and endure journeys of hundreds of kilometres crammed into trucks, all in search of one thing: a country that offers them a just life.

These migration routes across the world have turned into death trails. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), an UN intergovernmental organisation dedicated to ensure human and orderly migration, has put out an assessment that is numbing: between 2014 and 2025 over 81,000 migrants have died or disappeared. The most deadly route is the Central Mediterranean route, where at least 26,865 people have died since 2014, says the report.

According to UN data, there are some 304 million international migrants, and half of them live in specified intra-regions. The UN defines it as “Intra-regional migration routes capture the movement of people within the same geographic or political region, tracing the pathways that connect neighbouring countries and shape regional mobility.”

The prominent migration routes are: Central American (also known as the Latin American and the Caribbean routes), Central Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkans, Western Mediterranean, Western African Atlantic, Horn of Africa Eastern, and Eastern Sothern Africa.

These corridors, mapped in the IOM’s Global Overview of Migration Routes (Global Overview of Migration Routes (Jan – April 2026) | Displacement Tracking Matrix), January–April 2026, expose migrants to varying degrees of danger, from perilous sea crossings to hazardous land journeys through remote and often poorly monitored territories.

Increasingly, also pointing at the size and intensity of migrating units, the IMO’s recently released report “Documenting the Deaths of Child Migrants” estimates that over 4,400 child migrants have died during the 2014-2025 period. The report says like the death figure for migrants, the child migrant death is also grossly underestimated.

Broadly, child migrant casualty makes up to 10 per cent of total in all routes. Their share is much higher on some routes: 28 per cent at the Belarus–EU border; 23 per cent at both the Naf River crossing and the land crossing from the Syrian Arab Republic into Türkiye; 21 per cent on the Eastern Mediterranean route; and 14 per cent on both the English Channel and the Darién National Park crossings.

More than half of the recorded migrant deaths – 44,862 of the total 81,000 – have no information on age or age group. This suggest large number of child migrant must have been left out of the overall casualty record, or may not have been identified as a child.

“On the Central Mediterranean Route, for example, children accounted for 19 per cent of arrivals in Italy and Malta in 2024 but only 2 per cent of recorded deaths, highlighting gaps in demographic data and the extent to which child migrant deaths may remain invisible,” says the report underlining the missing child migrant death figure.

Children are often the least documented aspect of migration in the global routes. Child migrants go missing from the casualty record because of two reasons. First, as the IOM report explains, “missing figure refers to children whose deaths during migration are never recorded at all.” Second, there are “hidden figure” that document migrant death but never identify them as a child.

“Every child who dies on a migration journey deserves to be counted, yet too many are missing from the data,” says Stuart Campo, Chief Strategy Officer for IOM’s Department of Data, Insight and Policy.

“Thousands of migrants, including children, travel irregularly through remote and dangerous routes where deaths often go unreported or unnoticed. Additionally, fear among survivors, involvement of criminal networks, and the challenges of recovering bodies—especially at sea—mean that countless deaths remain undocumented. These data gaps are most pronounced in regions with high migration flows but limited official reporting,” the report reasons.

Of the total fatalities between 2014 and 2025, drowning caused 48,983 deaths. Of this, 36,626 individuals have been recorded without age specification. It is widely assumed that this figure has more children who have not been identified.

“There is evidence to suggest that children are underrepresented among these 44,862 deaths. Anecdotal evidence shows that children are often kept below deck during sea crossings, making them more vulnerable to hazards like toxic fumes and increasing their risk of being trapped and unable to escape during shipwrecks,” infers the IOM report that has detailed how information on casualty is collated and also has flagged the gaps.