Report: 2025 deadliest year for African migrants
Africa
By
Jacinta Mutura
| Apr 06, 2026
African migrants sail adrift in an overcrowded rubber boat, January 28, 2022. [Courtesy, AFP]
The UN agency on migration has announced that 2025 was the deadliest year for migrants plying the Eastern Route.
The International Organisation on Migration announced that 922 deaths and disappearances were reported along the route.
In their annual report released last month, the IOM indicated that the figures represented a significant increase from 558 cases reported in 2024.
The report indicates that 922 migrants died or disappeared in the Red Sea in 2025, marking the highest number since the launch of the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project in 2014.
READ MORE
Uchumi to hold first shareholders' meeting in eight years
Inside State's plan to auction Kenya's generational mineral wealth
Why Kenyan enterprises are stuck in the hustle stage
StanChart launches China, Kenya corridor to boost SME growth, cross-border trade
An open letter to SMEs: Do you know your customer's customer?
Mideast crisis: We have 21 days after which Kenya runs on empty
Experts dismiss CS Wandayi's claims, fault opaque fuel deals, policy failures
Kenya to benefit from Sh1.29 trillion Afreximbank emergency fund
The project records people while in the migration process, heading to an international destination. In total, 82,531 migrants have been missing since 2014.
The Eastern Migration Route links the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
“This makes 2025 the deadliest year on record for the Missing Migrants Project since its launch in 2014, with a minimum total of 4,368 cases on the route to date,” reads the report.
The report indicates that at least 32 people went missing along the Eastern Route in the fourth quarter of 2025, with violence being the leading cause of death (14).
According to the report, at the end of 2025, there were an estimated 400 stranded people in Djibouti, 6,600 in Somalia, and 132,300 in Yemen.
According to the report, the number of migrants who were stranded in Somalia increased by 55 per cent from the 4,200 people recorded in 2024.
Migrants were reportedly exposed to risks including armed violence, arrests, deportation, insecurity, detention and mistreatment, and dangerous transportation.
IOM also reported that local communities failed to offer support to migrants due to drought along the route.
According to the migration agency, the Eastern Route remains one of the busiest and riskiest around the world. The route is mostly used by migrants moving from and to multiple countries, including Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Yemen, to the Gulf states.
The route is used by hundreds of thousands of migrants, most of them who travel irregularly and rely on smugglers to facilitate their movement.
“A deteriorated humanitarian situation in Yemen has resulted in reports of stranded migrants and detention and mistreatment of women in smuggling dens,” IOM explains.
According to the report, 97 per cent of migrants using the route are Ethiopians, followed by Somalis at three per cent.
During the same period, there were 335 Eritreans, 144 Congolese, three Sudanese and one Yemeni national.
It further indicates that migration from Central Africa remains limited, although it has gone up compared to previous years.