Overview of the Situation
According to the report ‘Monitoring the Right to Life 2025‘ by Ca-minando Fronteras, a total of 3,090 people (192 of them women and 437 children) died between January and December 15, 2025, while attempting to reach Spain via migrant routes. This figure represents a 70.3% decrease from 2024, when the NGO recorded 10,400 fatalities or disappearances.
Analysis of Migrant Routes
The report examines migrant routes along the Western Euro-African Border, which encompasses both maritime and land borders between Spain and Guinea Conakry’s coastline to Arctic Algeria.
Decrease in Global Fatalities
Helena Maleno, the research coordinator, warns that the decrease in overall fatalities at borders is not due to increased protection of life rights. Instead, she notes an increase in tragedies as current routes use smaller boats, fragmenting the numbers without reducing lethality.
Maleno also highlights an increase in arrival attempts and fatal episodes, particularly on the Algerian route and crossings to Ceuta by swimming. New, increasingly distant, and dangerous routes are being opened, exposing migrants to extreme risk.
Key Findings
- The Algerian route has become the most-traversed migrant crossing to Spain, surpassing the Atlantic route to Canary Islands.
- 1,037 victims have been documented in 121 maritime tragedies on the Algerian route.
- The journey from Arctic Algeria to the Balearic Islands, especially Ibiza and Formentera, remains one of the most perilous due to its length and difficulty.
- This route is one of the most opaque and unseen by institutions, increasing life right protection deficits, delaying search system activation, and revealing insufficient cooperation between countries.
- Despite a significant decrease, the Atlantic route to Canary Islands remains the deadliest with 1,906 victims. A new, more distant, and dangerous route has emerged from Guinea Conakry.
- More than half of these emigrations included women, children, and adolescents.
- Crossing the Strait of Gibraltar has seen a notable increase in arrival attempts and tragedies, especially at nado access points to Ceuta, with 139 victims, 24% of whom are minors.
Inefficiencies and Challenges
The report concludes that fatalities and disappearances along Spain’s borders occur in a context of insufficient rescue device activation and externalization of border control to third countries.
- Delayed search activations, lack of coordination between states, and omission of rescues even when boat positions are known are among the inefficiencies.
- Additional challenges include the use of under-boats, long distances, overloading, and adverse weather conditions.
Ca-minando Fronteras’ Efforts
Since 2007, Ca-minando Fronteras has managed a 24/7 alert telephone line receiving information and alerts from people in danger at the borders.
This data is centralized in the Human Rights Observatory, established in 2014, which maintains a database of at-risk boats and a registry of deceased and disappeared individuals, constructed with contributions from families and migrant communities.
