THE Canary Islands Route, one of the most dangerous in the world for migrants, has already cost the lives of at least 702 people in the first seven months of 2024, three more than that of the central Mediterranean, considered for years as the largest cemetery in Europe for those who risk everything and embark on a precarious boat from Africa. Some NGOs put this figure at 4,808 dead.
Also called the Atlantic Road is, without a doubt, the deadliest road in the world in comparative terms (in proportion of deaths and survivors), but in 2024 it will already be in absolute numbers, according to the latest UNHCR data.
According to the United Nations refugee agency, in the first seven months of 2024, no fewer than 1,542 peoplefigures that the UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration always present as a minimum estimate, because they recognize that they are missing dozens of shipwrecks without witnesses or survivors.
Of these, 90% are divided equally between the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands and the central Mediterranean (mainly from Tunisia and Libya to Italy), with 702 and 699 deaths; 6.93% correspond to the Western Mediterranean (Strait of Gibraltar, Alboran Sea and Balearic Islands), with 107; and 2.20% occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean (from Turkey to Greece, mainly), with 34 deaths.
Absolute numbers do not reflect the whole reality because each route carries very different volumes of immigrants and refugees.
Last year, when the Canary Islands Route set its historic record for people rescued on the Spanish islands, with 40 330 According to the UNHCR (39,910, according to the Ministry of the Interior), the number of people crossing into Europe via the central Mediterranean has almost quadrupled, to 158,031.
The death rate has skyrocketed
This year (comparable UNHCR data from January to July, published in September), the Canary Islands Route is on track to break its historic record once again, with 21,675 people rescued, while in the central Mediterranean the flows have been contained in particular.
Despite this, 55% more people crossed the border from Africa to Italy and Malta than to the Canary Islands, or 33,576 people.
If we compare the number of deaths to the number of survivors on each route, the result is as follows: in 2024, The Canary Islands Route killed one person out of 31 survivors; the central Mediterranean, one for 48; the western Mediterranean, one for 72; and in the eastern Mediterranean, one for 761.
In other words, the mortality rate of Atlantic cayucos and pateras is 55% higher to that of Mediterranean barges, even in its most dangerous strip, north of Libya.
And this is if the analysis is based on the – minimal – figures of deaths compiled by the United Nations, because there are organizations very focused on Spanish routes, such as the NGO Caminando Fronteras, which affirm that from January to May 5,054 people died on boats bound for Spain; 4,808 of them on the Canary Islands Route, by 175 from the Balearic Islands, 47 from Alborán and 24 from the Strait.
