Source: thedailystar.net

Over 7,000 people died while they were trying to migrate either through sea routes or deserts, International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said today.

“As of today, over 7,000 people already have lost their lives along all these routes in 2016. And these are only the fatalities that we know about,” IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said.

The migrants died when the smugglers crammed them into sink, of exhaustion while crossing deserts or in captivity, he said in a message on International Migrants Day which will be observed across the world tomorrow.

He also said extreme poverty, climate change, broken and corrupt economies put millions of men, women and children at risk.

IOM, the UN Migration Agency, calculated that one in every seven people on the planet is a migrant.

“The report I receive twice weekly is produced by IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, which attempts to identify every dead, missing or “disappeared” migrant,” he said.

In 2016, for the third straight year, the Missing Migrants tally will top 5,000 fatalities, he mentioned.

“Every day for the past three years, just over a dozen migrants have died on average, or one man, woman or child every two hours,” IOM DG said.

He also stressed the need for taking a hard look at this shocking death toll.