Mediterranean migrant death rate slows after search-and-rescue boost

Fewer than 100 migrants drowned last month, down from 329 in May 2014, despite greater numbers risking perilous journey

 Migrants wrapped in thermal blankets queue to disembark from a rescue vessel in the Sicilian harbour of Augusta, Italy. Photograph: Antonio Parrinello/Reuters

The rate at which migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean has slowed since the resumption of widescale rescue operations in May, with the death toll falling below the equivalent figure from the same period last year.

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The number of deaths in the first five months of 2015 has exceeded 1,800 and is at least five times higher than the death toll for the same period of 2014, when 425 migrants drowned between Italy and Libya.

But the rate dropped significantly in May, after several EU navies sent ships to bolster rescue efforts and a private rescue mission run by Médecins Sans Frontières and the Migrant Offshore Aid Station returned to the high seas.

Fewer than 100 migrants drowned last month, down from 329 in May 2014, despite more migrants crossing the Mediterranean, the UN said. In each of the previous months of the year, the death tolls had far outstripped their 2014 equivalents.

Britain was among the European navies to send additional rescue ships to assist the Italian coastguard, after about 800 migrants drowned in a shipwreck in April. HMS Bulwark has been saving lives in the Mediterranean since the start of May. The EU border agency, Frontex, also announced plans last week to quadruple its area of maritime operations.

Campaigners say it is impossible to draw definitive causal links between the fall in deaths and the increase in rescue operations. But Will Turner, who leads MSF’s Mediterranean missions, nevertheless welcomed the rise in state-led rescue efforts and called for them to continue.

“We welcome all increases in search-and-rescue capacity – as long as it remains in place, and there isn’t a blurring of lines between military operations and the life-saving humanitarian work,” he said.

Turner said search-and-rescue operations were not the reason thousands of migrants were attempting to reach Europe. “We still don’t feel that having search and rescue, which should be there regardless, is a pull factor. From what we see and from the people we meet from Syria, Eritrea and Somalia, people are willingly taking these journeys because there’s no safe alternative.”

More than 46,000 migrants have reached Europe by boat in 2015, according to the UN, compared with 41,243 between January and May 2014.