Missing Migrants Project draws on a range of sources to track deaths of migrants along migratory routes across the globe. Data from this project are published in the report “Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost during Migration,” which provides the most comprehensive global tally of migrant fatalities since 2014.
What is included in Missing Migrants Project data?
Missing Migrants Project counts migrants who have died at the external borders of states, or in the process of migration towards an international destination, regardless of their legal status. The Project records only those migrants who die during their journey to a country different from their country of residence.
Missing Migrants Project data include the deaths of migrants who die in transportation accidents, shipwrecks, violent attacks, or due to medical complications during their journeys. It also includes the number of corpses found at border crossings that are categorized as the bodies of migrants, on the basis of belongings and/or the characteristics of the death. For instance, a death of an unidentified person might be included if the decedent is found without any identifying documentation in an area known to be on a migration route. Deaths during migration may also be identified based on the cause of death, especially if is related to trafficking, smuggling, or means of travel such as on top of a train, in the back of a cargo truck, as a stowaway on a plane, in unseaworthy boats, or crossing a border fence. While the location and cause of death can provide strong evidence that an unidentified decedent should be included in Missing Migrants Project data, this should always be evaluated in conjunction with migration history and trends.
What is excluded?
The count excludes deaths that occur in immigration detention facilities or after deportation to a migrant’s homeland, as well as deaths more loosely connected with migrants´ irregular status, such as those resulting from labour exploitation. Migrants who die or go missing after they are established in a new home are also not included in the data, so deaths in refugee camps or housing are excluded. The deaths of internally displaced persons who die within their country of origin are also excluded. There remains a significant gap in knowledge and data on such deaths. Data and knowledge of the risks and vulnerabilities faced by migrants in destination countries, including death, should not be neglected, but rather tracked as a distinct category.
This dataset contains shapefiles for Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. Each country has its individual file. The dataset counts with contributions of hundreds of users. This dataset is updated daily.
The original dataset can be downloaded from the OSM West Africa Ebola response wiki.
This dataset is UCDP's most disaggregated dataset, covering individual events of organized violence (phenomena of lethal violence occurring at a given time and place). These events are sufficiently fine-grained to be geo-coded down to the level of individual villages, with temporal durations disaggregated to single, individual days.
Sundberg, Ralph, and Erik Melander, 2013, “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset”, Journal of Peace Research, vol.50, no.4, 523-532
Högbladh Stina, 2019, “UCDP GED Codebook version 19.1”, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
The IPC Acute Food Insecurity (IPC AFI) classification provides strategically relevant information to decision makers that focuses on short-term objectives to prevent, mitigate or decrease severe food insecurity that threatens lives or livelihoods. This data has been produced by the National IPC Technical Working Groups for IPC population estimates since 2017. All national population figures are based on official country population estimates. IPC estimates are those published in country IPC reports.
There is also a global dataset.
The IPC Acute Food Insecurity (IPC AFI) classification provides strategically relevant information to decision makers that focuses on short-term objectives to prevent, mitigate or decrease severe food insecurity that threatens lives or livelihoods. This data has been produced by the National IPC Technical Working Groups for IPC population estimates since 2018. All national population figures are based on official country population estimates. IPC estimates are those published in country IPC reports.
The dataset is based on the assessments and Health Resources Availability and Mapping (HeRAM) carried out by World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with health cluster partners during different emergencies in Pakistan. Please note that it is not necessary that the assessment covered all the health facilities in a particular district. These have now been provided with a 3 word address so those on the ground can communicate the location of each facility.
This is a repository for PDF files that are linked on the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data's website, https://centre.humdata.org. Please note that if you wish to access these files, we recommend you use the Resources section of the Centre's website rather than downloading from HDX.