This Tuesday, September 3, at least 12 people died in the English Channel, while trying to cross the sea on a makeshift boat. The tragedies are multiplying.
Crossing the Channel, a risky operation attempted by thousands of migrants each year, continues to cause many deaths. The tragedy that occurred this Tuesday, September 3 off Cap Gris-Nez, is a reminder that nothing can yet stem this type of tragedy. At least 12 migrants lost their lives after their boat broke up at sea, the Interior Ministry announced, and major rescue operations were deployed to provide assistance to all those shipwrecked. At least 70 people were on board the makeshift vessel.
The scale of the tragedy is measured in dozens of missing migrants, only in the last 3 years and only on the Channel migratory route. According to the counts made by the organization Missing Migrantsthere are indeed at least 122 people who have disappeared or been found dead while trying to cross the sea between France and England, between 2021 and September 2024: 40 in 2021, 16 in 2022, 24 in 2023 and 42 in 2024, with the provisional toll of Cap Gris-Nez. At least 13 children are among the victims. Let us recall that in November 2021, a shipwreck off the coast of Calais left 27 dead.
These figures are also probably very partial, according to the NGO which is trying to report on the human tragedy. “The Missing Migrants Project has recorded the deaths of hundreds of people for whom no identifying information is available, which means that the families of missing migrants may not know what happened to their loved ones,” the organization says. “For others, only partial information is known, but it indicates that men, women and children from countries in the Middle East, South Asia and most parts of Africa have all died trying to migrate to Europe,” it adds.
According to data from the British Home Office, reported by La Voix du Nord, more than 135,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on board so-called “small boats” since 2019.