The report Vícitmas de la necrofrontera 2018-2022 (here in PDF), prepared by the Spanish collective Walking Borders, has put figures on the continuing tragedy of recent years: 11,286 people have died in the last five years on the main migratory routes crossing the western border between Africa and Europe, i.e. six deaths each day.

The research work has been carried out by monitoring the maritime routes of the Canary Islands, Strait of Gibraltar, Alborán and Algeria and the barriers of Ceuta and Melilla, among which the authors have highlighted that the most deadly has been the Canary Islands with 7,692 deaths. They also note that among the deceased there are 31 different origins, of which 1,272 are women and 377 children.

In the presentation of the report, the members of Walking Frontera have collaborated with the hard reading of the situation, pointing directly to the migration policies of the Spanish State and the European Union:

“The data presented in this report show that the lives of these 11,286 people have not been lost by chance, but by a structured and sustained necropolitics that is the basis of the construction of the global migratory systems of the 21st century.”

Through these migratory policies, they have denounced in the report that people who want to cross the border are placed in “structural vulnerability”, arguing that they are expelled from the country of origin and that the conditions imposed on them throughout the transition process “cause them to lose their lives”.

“During these five years, the Spanish State has arbitrarily established bilateral migration policy systems in collaboration with countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania and Senegal, considerably reducing the protection of the rights of people on the move,” they explain.

In addition, the authors of the report have recalled that most of the deaths on the western border of Europe are missing (241 boats have disappeared in the period analysed, none of them live). “This system of death makes it possible to voluntarily deny the existence of the victims,” they stress.