Financed by Journalismfund, the team of journalists started putting together all the data available on migrants casualties since 2000. Publications include Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zürich), Sydsvenskan (Malmö), L’Espresso (Rome), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), RadioBubble (Athens) and El Confidencial (Madrid).
What they found out:
- By aggregating sources together, they showed that the number of sourced dead and missing migrants is 50% higher than current estimates.
- Mortality rates between migration routes vary widely, from 2% in the Canaries to 6% near Malta and Lampedusa. EU Member States constantly close the routes with low mortality, pushing migrants towards the more dangerous ones.
- No EU Member State or EU institution has data on migrants death. For some Member States, dead migrants “aren’t migrating anymore, so why care?”, in the words of a public official.
- When it comes to talking of “lives saved” and security of migrations, politician and border guards engage in shameless lies and whitewashing of their activities and programs, renaming surveillance and push-back activity into search and rescue operations.
The Migrant Files won in 2014 the European Press Prize, Innovation Award, the Global Editors Network Data Journalism Awards and the Gold Medal at 'Premios ÑH'.
(Photos © UNHCR A. Rodrigez)
