The Spanish coast guard says it has rescued 86 people from a “cayuco”, or open canoe, after an aid group warned that hundreds of people had gone missing on three separate boats that were trying to reach Europe.
The so-called “Atlantic route” to Europe has become more popular in recent years, as European policies aimed at preventing migration have increased the dangers along other routes, such as the one through Libya and across the sea to Italy.
Last year, 15,682 people reached the Canary Islands by sea, according to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration , while 45 shipwrecks were recorded, resulting in the death or disappearance of at least 543 people. Caminando Fronteras – which generally gives figures, based on regular monitoring, that are much higher than IOM’s – says that nearly 1,000 people died on the route in the first half of this year. In 2021, it says, 4,404 people died or disappeared trying to reach Spain, about 90 per cent of whom were trying to reach the Canary Islands. In 2022, the aid group put the number who died on the Atlantic route at 1,784.
. Senegalese fishermen – struggling to survive because of decreased catches – are increasingly using their boats for human smuggling, said Yora Kane, the secretary general of SAGMS, a union for Senegalese seafarers. They pack up to 150 people into a boat and sail towards the Canary Islands, he said. “In bad times, when there’s no fish, there begins another bad time of migrants ... Because they can’t feed themselves they use these boats to go abroad, towards the Mediterranean and Europe.
“As I’m speaking to you ... you will have people preparing to take the risk,” he said on the phone from Spain, where he had found work on a farm. “Mostly it’s [because of] the lack of opportunity.
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