THE world should not be deceived by a global migration count lower than the highest annual statistics on record — 9,200 for 2024. Some 7,904 people disappeared or perished on migration routes worldwide in 2025 says the UN’s International Organisation for Migration. With these numbers, the missing or dead tally since 2014 surpasses 80,000 as per the agency’s Missing Migrants Project. The harsh realities in their countries remain troublingly persistent, forcing the uneducated and indigent to choose irregular journeys as safer travel alternatives are out of their reach. The migration agency states that the casualties and disappearances “mark a continuation and escalation of a global failure to end these preventable deaths”. It is a question of political will by affluent countries, largely responsible for the bleak circumstance in poor regions, to rescue more lives, introduce emergency measures that end deaths, and resolve the many problems plaguing families left behind.

This issue and concerns for victims cannot fade with the headlines. Extraordinary aid cuts and curbs on information related to illegal routes have led to surging numbers of migrants lost at sea. Last year, sea routes to Europe saw 3,400 deaths and disappearances; Bangladeshi nationals formed the largest group while policy changes in Syria succeeded in lowering arrivals. In Pakistan, the culture of impunity has created miserable conditions for the poor: 68pc of Pakistani migrants said that the lack of education, employment and basic amenities forced them out. The US State Department’s trafficking report in 2024 revealed an absence of accountability, for the fifth consecutive year, against corrupt officials. Transnational undertakings of this scale can hardly happen without the FIA’s knowledge. Other than alleviating factors that drive illegal migration, the state must ensure complicit officers are held to account, and that migrants — victims not criminals — are treated humanely. Most importantly, it must admit, and address, its own failure to protect and provide for citizens.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2026