Migrants face 'unimaginable horrors' crossing Africa says UN

Refugees and migrants face extreme violence, abuse and exploitation on land routes crossing Africa to get to the Mediterranean, with far more believed to be dying there than at sea, a U.N.-backed report said Friday.

Nearly 30,000 migrants have been declared dead or missing attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in the past decade.

But it could be even worse for those travelling through Africa to the coast, according to a report from United Nations agencies for refugees and migrants and the monitoring group Mixed Migration Centre.

Based on more than 31,000 interviews with refugees and migrants, the report found that 1,180 people were known to have died while crossing the Sahara Desert between January 2020 and May 2024.

Five deaths a day are being recorded on the desert routes — taking the total to at least 870 so far this year — Laurence Hart of the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration told reporters in Geneva.

But these numbers are believed to be a vast underestimate.

  Torture, kidnapping, rape

While data is lacking, the bodies behind the report say there are clearly thousands of deaths each year.

"Deaths of refugees and migrants in the desert (are) presumed to be double those happening at sea," they said in a statement.

"For everyone crossing the Sahara, you get the testimony of bodies being seen, being dropped," said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's special envoy for the central and western Mediterranean.

"Everyone that has crossed the Sahara can tell you of people they know who died in the desert," he told reporters.

Those on the move face torture, kidnapping for ransom, people trafficking, sexual violence, robbery, arbitrary detention and collective...