PRETORIA, April 22. /TASS/. Nearly 8,000 people died or went missing in 2025 on illegal migration routes, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported.

"The deaths or disappearance of nearly 7,900 people were documented on global migration routes worldwide in 2025," the IOM said in its report. "While the number of deaths during migration recorded in 2025 is a decrease from the nearly 9,200 recorded in 2024 - which was the highest annual total on record – it nonetheless marks a grim total of more than 80,000 lives lost since 2014," the organization added.

The vast majority of illegal migrants have died while attempting to reach their destination by sea, the IOM notes. The deadliest route runs from Libya and Tunisia across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy. Last year, 2,100 migrants died while traveling along this route. Next is the Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands, which are part of Spain. The number of those who died or went missing on this route in 2025 was about 1,000. The third most dangerous route is the one from the Horn of Africa through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where 992 people died or went missing.

In total, 4,767 undocumented migrants died or went missing last year while attempting to move from Africa to other continents.