ALBAWABA - A Tunisian rights group said on Tuesday that at least 1,300 illegal migrants have died or went missing in 2023 trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe seeking asylum.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 2,498 people died or went missing while trying to cross the central Mediterranean last year, rising 75% more than in 2022.
Tunisia and Libya are the primary north African departure destinations for thousands of illegal migrants who risk their lives each year in the hope of finding better lives in Europe.
Last December, the World Organization Against Torture released a study claiming that migrants and refugees in Tunisia face "daily institutional violence," such as arbitrary arrests, forced displacements, and expulsions to the borders with Libya and Algeria.
During a press conference, migration expert at the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights Islem Ghaarbi stated: "1,313 people died or disappeared off the Tunisian coast, a figure never reached in Tunisia".
According to Ghaarbi, at least two-thirds of the victims were from Sub-Saharan Africa, and the total was "equivalent to approximately half of the deaths and missing in the Mediterranean" in 2023.
The number of sub-Saharan migrants leaving Tunisia increased after President Kais Saied stated in February that "hordes of illegal migrants" posed a demographic threat to the country.
A court official in the coastal city of Monastir reported last week that the remains of 13 Sudanese migrants who had left from the port of Sfax had been discovered, but that 27 other persons who had sailed with them remained missing.
Tunisia's deteriorating economy — the World Bank expects growth of 1.2 percent in 2023, with unemployment at 38 percent — has prompted more Tunisians to seek better chances across the Mediterranean, Arab News reported.
