IOM: Almost 20 refugees were dying every day in the last three years

Refugee and migrant deaths worldwide recorded an unprecedented record in 2016 as 7495 people lost their lives, number one third higher than in 2015, with the majority of deaths recorded in the Mediterranean, announced yesterday by the International Organization for Migration (IOM ).

The preliminary report of 2016 is expected to increase as new data is added has increased the total number of immigrants and refugees deaths in the last three years 18 501 ... that is about 20 deaths per day, said the IOM.

"These figures; it is simply shocking. And we believe that we are far from counting all the victims, "he said in a statement the Director General of IOM William Lacey Swing.

"We need to leave behind the counting period. We must act to make legal migration, safe for all, "he added.

2016 recorded a total of 7495 deaths of migrants, compared to 5.740 in 2015 and 5.267 in 2014.

IOM, which collects data on migrant deaths since 2013, said that the increase in the recorded number of losses is primarily due to better methods of research and data collection.

Specific migratory routes proved more fatal, as the passage of the central Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe, where about 4,600 people died in 2016.

The Agency stressed that the death reports often come from immigrants themselves increasingly record the length of their journeys to posts on social media.

IOM spokesman Joel Milman said that the Agency has developed good tools for monitoring movement of migrants, using social media in Latin America, but some other parts of the world are "almost invisible to us."

The routes chosen Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans through Iran and Turkey may be more lethal than the figures indicate, Milman said at a press conference in Geneva.

The Horn of Africa, the Bay of Bengal and the route linking Ethiopia and South Africa are other areas where the recording of the image that there is quite incomplete.

"There are many extremely difficult and dangerous migration routes; but just do not have the tools to monitor," said Milman.

"It's very likely never get a real, final number of all these tragedies," he added. "We hope to come one day where those numbers will start to fall. But that day may be long in coming. "

Alongside Milman unexpected identified two areas where migrant deaths were recorded in 2016, among them an increasing number of Cubans who made the passage to Colombia and Panama Darien peninsula.

Also a sudden movement of thousands of Haitian residents in Brazil and references immigrant deaths in Chile, Ecuador, Mexico and Central America, a rare phenomenon in the past.