Recommendations on saving migrants' lives
Prevention of migrants dying and going missing
Migrant deaths and disappearances are preventable. The main direct causes of migrant deaths are drowning, accidents, violence, harsh environments, and lack of access to healthcare, shelter, food and water. Migrant disappearances are often due to an inability to communicate with families, or to the lack of identification of the dead. Policy choices, and limited access to safe and regular pathways, also affect deaths and disappearances.
- Establish independent review bodies to assess and mitigate the impact of laws, policies and practices on the risk of migrants dying or going missing.
- Revise or repeal laws and policies that criminalize or obstruct the provision of humanitarian assistance to migrants, irrespective of status.
- Adopt a humanitarian and precautionary approach to identifying and responding to possible distress situations on land and at sea. Interpret ‘distress’ broadly and in good faith.
- Prevent family separation, including at borders, during rescue operations and disembarkation. Reunite separated families wherever possible and without delay.
- Strengthen search and rescue capacity at sea and on land in line with international law and the principle of humanity.
- Adopt agreements to improve the coordination of search and rescue between States, including as provided by international maritime law.
- Implement post-search and rescue procedures – including at disembarkation, border points and along land routes – in a humane, predictable, and rights-based manner, with attention to specific vulnerabilities, and enhance the capacity of first responders.
- Ensure that governmental emergency response systems, particularly in situations of large movements, can provide needs-based humanitarian assistance and protection.
- Use the Guidelines to Protect Migrants in Countries Experiencing Conflict and Natural Disaster Guidelines to inform preparedness and response to situations of distress, even in the absence of conflict or disasters.
- Adopt measures to separate humanitarian assistance from immigration enforcement ensuring migrants in distress, irrespective of status, can receive assistance without negative consequences.
- Improve the coordination of humanitarian assistance to migrants in distress.
- Provide unhindered access and safe operational space, including through humanitarian service points, for humanitarian actors to deliver assistance in line with humanitarian principles.
- Allocate funding to humanitarian actors to deliver principled, needs-based assistance to migrants irrespective of status.
Search and identification of migrants who have died or gone missing
Searching for and identifying missing migrants, whether alive or deceased, requires national measures and cooperation among origin, transit and destination countries.
- Develop national systems for the collection, centralization and systematization of case data on unidentified human remains.
- Systematically mobilize Disaster Victim Identification responses to mass casualty events involving migrants.
- Set up processes for families, co-travelers, and others to register cases in an accessible, safe and confidential manner. Use the information for humanitarian purposes only, unless otherwise agreed by those providing it. Follow a standardized approach to registration of missing migrant cases as per International Committee of the Red Cross guidance.
- Appoint national focal points on missing migrants for transnational cooperation on search and policy.
- Increase bilateral cooperation between key countries of origin and disappearance, as a steppingstone towards route-based cooperation, e.g. on access to biometric databases and exchange of relevant information for search and identification.
- Leverage regional and sub-regional bodies to facilitate cooperation among States and other actors on search and identification along routes such as through common policies, information-sharing and exchange of practices.
Provision of support to affected families
Families of the missing face socio-economic, psychological, administrative, and legal consequences. The disappearance of a relative may affect access to property, inheritance, parental or social welfare rights.
- Provide families access to critical legal documentation, such as certificates of absence, that can help address challenges including marital status, control of property and guardianship of children.
- Support the role of civil society and other stakeholders as important intermediaries between families and States.
Justice, accountability and redress
Investigation and monitoring of allegations of migrant deaths and disappearances and prompt, effective remedies and reparations are crucial.
- Provide justice, accountability and redress for migrants and their families even in the absence of a formal criminal complaint.
- Conduct independent, impartial and thorough investigations, with the participation of families, into cases of endangerment to migrants' lives or safety during their journey and where they were subjected to rights violations by State or non-State actors.
Data and foresight
Gaps in available data, monitoring and reporting generate flawed perceptions of the problem and undermine effective responses.
- Collect, systematize, centralize, and publish anonymized data on migrant deaths and disappearances. Use standardized criteria to categorize migrants in mortality records and standardized protocols to record disappearances.
- Regularly report these data to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.
- Share migration forecasting data across government, to allow for preparedness measures that optimize humanitarian assistance.
Practices
Mauritania, Trinidad and Tobago
Region: Americas
Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama
Region: Africa, Europe
Gambia, The, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal
Argentina, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay
Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen
*References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).