140 Migrants Drown Off Coast of Senegal

A boat carrying 200 migrants capsized on October 24 off the coast of Saint-Louis, Senegal, north of its departure point in Mbour.

Around 140 migrants traveling to the Canary Islands by boat drowned off the coast of Senegal on October 24. The incident is now the year’s deadliest shipwreck according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The boat was carrying an estimated 200 people, including passengers and crew. Only 59 survived the wreck, and so far the remains of 20 people have been recovered.

The boat had departed from Mbour, a town located on the western coast of Senegal, when it caught fire and sank near the city of Saint-Louis in northern Senegal.

In 2019, a total of 2700 migrants travelled from Senegal to the Canary Islands or Mauritania. More than twice that number have attempted the passage in the first ten months of 2020. The total number of migrant boats departing from West Africa this year has more than quadrupled to 11,000.

Shipwrecks are not an uncommon occurrence for migrant ships in the region. In September, 26 percent of boats carrying migrants departing from Senegal were shipwrecked or “experienced an incident.”  To date, an estimated 414 people have died along the route, despite the fact that most Senegalese migrants now travel by land to Tunisia or Libya before crossing the Mediterranean. The end goal is to reach Europe, where migrants hope to get jobs and send money home. 

The most common causes of such incidents are overcrowded or low-quality boats, extortion, exploitation, and abuse of migrants at isolated departure areas. 

Even after the treacherous journey, the majority of those travelling from Senegal to Europe by sea have been denied visas.