“Two out of every three migrants who die at sea are never recovered, while since 2014, more than 27,000 people out of more than 35,000 migrants recorded as missing along migration routes to Europe have never been found,” the IOM said. [Getty]
The absence of official Tunisian data and information on the fate of migrants coincides with a recent warning from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) about “invisible deaths”—deaths at sea in which bodies are never recovered, or victims’ fates are never documented, leaving thousands of missing people outside official statistics.
The Mediterranean Sea no longer swallows migrants, but also any news about them. In Tunisia, the authorities announce almost daily that they have foiled irregular migration attempts, dismantled smuggling networks, or deported migrants.
Yet data on drowning incidents and search and rescue operations have almost disappeared, even as migrant boats continue to depart from the Tunisian and Libyan coasts towards Europe.
In previous years, the Tunisian authorities, the National Guard, and civil society organisations such as the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights published data on rescue operations, body recoveries, and the number of missing people, providing an approximate picture of the scale of the tragedy.
However, over the past three years, this data has become increasingly limited or scarce.
According to IOM records, the number of migrants who died while attempting to reach Europe during the first half of 2026 rose to 1,570 people, an increase of 27 per cent compared with the same period in 2025, despite a decline in the number of migrants who successfully reached European shores.
The UN agency noted that these figures represent a conservative figure, because they exclude cases that could not be verified.
Italian data
The head of migrant rights organisation “Earth for All”, Imad al-Sultani, said data from the Italian Interior Ministry has become the official source for figures relating to migrants, whether those who reached Europe or those who went missing in the Mediterranean.
“Since Tunisia signed the migration memorandum of understanding with the European Union in July 2023, information on the fate of migrants has become scarce, despite international organisations and rescue groups acknowledging that tragedies continue and that boats departing from the Tunisian coast continue to sink,” he told The New Arab.
“The Tunisian authorities avoid disclosing information about migrant boats departing from their shores to avoid being held responsible for the fate of these people following the restrictions imposed under the 2023 agreement,” al-Sultani said. “The migration agreement signed between Tunisia and the European Union pays no attention to humanitarian issues or migrants’ lives. Instead, it focuses solely on deterrence, punishment, and preventing people arriving from sub-Saharan Africa and the southern Mediterranean from reaching the European Union.”
“The absence of data on missing migrants does not necessarily mean that the number of deaths has fallen. Rather, it reflects a decline in monitoring and documentation efforts and the difficulty of accessing incident sites, particularly after tighter restrictions were imposed on the work of several humanitarian organisations,” al-Sultani added.
“Official data now focuses on the arrest of migrants, the prevention of maritime border crossings, and the deportation of migrants under the voluntary return programme, while information relating to drowning incidents or the number of missing people remains scarce, even though migration attempts have not stopped,” he stressed.
Tunisian authorities continue at an accelerated pace to gather migrants from sub-Saharan African countries ahead of their deportation to their countries of origin.
Last June, Tunisian National Guard spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Hossam Eddine Jebabli, told media outlets that 27,000 migrants had voluntarily returned to their countries from Tunisia over the past three years.
Two-thirds of drowned migrants are never found
The IOM warns that “invisible deaths” are increasing as a result of reduced search and rescue capacity, weak information sharing between countries, and cuts to government rescue operations.
The IOM noted that around 1,500 additional people were reported missing in the Mediterranean last year, without their fate being verified, and were therefore not included in the official death toll.
“Two out of every three migrants who die at sea are never recovered, while since 2014, more than 27,000 people out of more than 35,000 migrants recorded as missing along migration routes to Europe have never been found,” the IOM said.
In recent years, Tunisia has become one of the main departure points for migrants heading towards the Italian coast, both for Tunisian migrants and those from sub-Saharan African countries.
Despite tighter security measures following the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the European Union in the summer of 2023, crossing attempts have never ceased.
Instead, routes have become more dangerous as smugglers increasingly use more fragile boats or sail longer distances to avoid surveillance.
The IOM says that whenever traditional routes are closed, migrants turn to more dangerous ones, explaining why deaths continue to rise despite fewer arrivals.
The organisation warns that weakened search and rescue capacity not only increases the number of victims but also leaves many deaths undocumented, depriving families of knowing the fate of their relatives.
Thousands of families across Africa and the Middle East have spent years searching for any information about loved ones who disappeared at sea, while their fate remains unknown.
The UN agency is calling for the restoration of search and rescue capacity, stronger information sharing between countries of origin, transit, and destination, protection for humanitarian organisations, and improved systems for documenting missing people and identifying victims.
The head of Earth for All said that “in the absence of regular official data on the number of people who have drowned or gone missing off the Tunisian coast, it becomes difficult to assess the true humanitarian cost of migration control policies or determine whether deaths have genuinely declined or have simply become less well documented.”
Ten thousand missing
Meanwhile, the head of the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights, Mustapha Abdelkabir, estimated that around 10,000 Tunisian migrants have gone missing at sea since 2011 without appearing in official statistics.
He said invisible deaths among Tunisian migrants and migrants from sub-Saharan African countries continue to increase despite the lack of official data on their numbers.
Abdelkabir told The New Arab, “Through agencies across several ministries, the authorities can count cases of drowning and migrants who disappear at sea, but this information is no longer made public.”
“Organisations working on migration now rely on field observations or reports from families about the disappearance or sinking of migrant boats departing from the Tunisian coast,” he said.
“Organisations receive reports from Tunisian families about migrant boats carrying their relatives either disappearing or arriving in Italy, and these reports form an important database for civil society organisations,” he added. “Tracking boats carrying migrants from sub-Saharan Africa is usually much more difficult because, in most cases, there is no one to report them missing. We believe the actual number of deaths along migration routes in the Mediterranean is far higher than the figures recorded by international organisations.”
“The bodies of unidentified migrants remain in hospital mortuaries without being buried, while bodies continue to be recovered from the sea regularly,” Abdelkabir further said. “Migrant boats also continue to depart from different parts of the Tunisian coast despite increased maritime patrols, efforts to track human trafficking networks, and attempts to dismantle migrant camps.”
“A domestic legal framework should be established to regulate migration in a way that strengthens migrants’ rights and helps the authorities maintain official records of living, missing, and deceased migrants,” he concluded.
Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.
