Visualizing IOM data on people who went missing or lost their lives during migration
58,444 dead or missing human beings. That is the number the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has documented since 2014 (latest included incident: Sep 5th 2023). The actual number is likely much higher.
Here's a visualization I made of that horrendous number. Each circle in this graph represents one of more than 13,000 incidents from the IOM database where at least one migrant died or went missing. The circle's size indicates the number of people affected.
The Mediterranean has by far been the region where most people died or went missing since 2014: More than 28,000.
Find an interactive version here: https://yotka.org/missing-migrants/
(Disclaimer: it probably takes some time to load.)
The Dataset used for this project is the result of meticulous work by the Missing Migrants Project. It contains more than 13,000 incidents with information on where they happened, how many people died, which migration route was used, and where the information came from. Read more about the methodology here.
