Switzerland - Through two and a half weeks of September, IOM teams have recorded total arrivals to Europe by sea in 2015 at 473,887 men, women and children. At least 182,000 of those migrants have arrived from Syria—making Syrians just under 40 per cent of this year’s total. In 2014, Syrians comprised between 25 per cent and 33 per cent of those entering Europe by sea.
Deaths on sea routes today stand at 2,812, up from 2,661 at the end of August. In other words: an average of just over 8 fatalities per day through the current month. September 2015 may prove to be less lethal for Mediterranean Sea migrants than was September 2014, largely because it was a year ago when between 500 and 800 migrants went missing in a single tragedy off the coast of Malta, when a craft filled with mostly Syrian and Palestinian migrants reportedly was rammed by a smugglers boat after an altercation on the high seas. Only 11 migrants are known to have survived that shipwreck, with hundreds of victims never recovered.
IOM Thursday (17/09) released new data on registered arrivals in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRoM). IOM reminds members of the media that virtually all of this migrant flow arrives from Greece, but may not necessarily be coming from sea-borne smuggling routes. IOM does not discount the possibility some of those registered may have passed through Albania, Turkey or Bulgaria and therefore are not always the same migrants recorded as entering the Greek islands from Turkey. IOM believes the overwhelming majority represent those migrants continuing their journeys from Greece’s Aegean islands, but recognize there may be discrepancies.