Pakistan to the Canary Islands: Does a migrant shipwreck shed light on a new route?

About fifty people, including many Pakistanis, are believed to have drowned after their boat, which departed from Mauritania for the Canary Islands, sank, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said on Thursday, January 16.

The boat, which had reportedly been carrying around 80 passengers, left Mauritania on January 2 and eventually capsized off the disputed Western Sahara region, occupied by Morocco. The ship got into difficulties after “13 days of anguish on the crossing without anyone coming to rescue them,” stated Helena Maleno, the head of Walking Borders, on X.

According to a report in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn on January 20, just ten bodies have been recovered so far. Meanwhile, the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on Sunday (January 19) that it had identified 21 Pakistani nationals among the survivors.

Some survivors, including some Pakistanis, were taken to a camp near the port of Dakhla.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari expressed grief over the deaths, reported the news agency Associated Press (AP).

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Ten bodies recovered, more still missing

The ministry press release stated that “through our diplomatic mission in Rabat, immediate assistance has been mobilized for the affected nationals.” The embassy stated it “has arranged essential provisions including food, water, medicine, and clothing. Local authorities in Dakhla are providing shelter and medical care in response to our diplomatic outreach.”

On Saturday, the embassy’s consular team was dispatched to Dakhla to oversee relief operations and coordinate with local authorities. The Pakistani government, it stated, “remains in close coordination with the relevant authorities in Morocco to ensure comprehensive support for our affected citizens and finalize repatriation procedures.”

It went on to list all identified survivors with their full name, date of birth and passport numbers. According to the dates of birth listed, the youngest survivors identified appear to be just 20 years old, and the eldest of the group will turn 50 later this year.

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Deadly Atlantic route

According to estimates by the Spanish NGO Walking Borders, at least 10,457 people may have died trying to reach Spain in 2024. The majority of those deaths occurred on the dangerous Atlantic route from the coasts of West Africa toward the Spanish archipelago. Speaking to the Spanish broadcaster 24 Horas de RNE, Helena Maleno of Walking Borders called the number of deaths a “massacre.”

According to figures released by the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, 48,843 migrants made their way to Spain via the Northwest African maritime route and 16,999 arrived in Spain via the western Mediterranean route. An additional 476 people crossed into Spain via land borders, mostly via the Spanish enclaves on the African continent, Ceuta and Melilla.

According to data from the European Border Agency, Frontex, as of the end of October 2024, Malian nationals (13,450) represented the largest national group of arrivals. They were followed by Senegalese nationals (9,300), Algerians (7,342), and Moroccans (6,870). Pakistani nationals did not rank among the top ten national groups for overall arrivals.

However, Frontex data from January to October 31, 2024, showed that 178 Pakistani nationals were registered as having taken the route toward the Canary Islands. This made them the tenth most common national group on this specific route. By comparison, approximately 72 times as many Malians (12,948) used the same route during the same period.

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‘A new Asia route’ to the Canaries

In November 2024, the news agency Reuters interviewed several Pakistani nationals on the Canary Islands, who suggested that a “new Asia route” towards Europe might be emerging. At the time, data from Frontex indicated that the Canary Islands recorded the fastest increase in sea arrivals across the European Union. By mid-November, data from Spain’s Interior Ministry revealed that sea arrivals had risen by 23 percent compared to the same period in 2023.

Frontex spokesperson Chris Borowski told Reuters that the agency believed smuggling networks were exploiting instability in the Sahel region, sending an increasing number of boats.

Migration researcher Alberto Ares, of the Spanish Comillas Pontifical University and director of the European Support Network for Refugees, told Reuters that “the route to the Canaries has grown because other routes are blocked.”

Several Pakistanis interviewed in Tenerife told Reuters they had each paid smugglers up to 16,000 euros for their trip from Pakistan, via the UAE and Ethiopia to Senegal, before they boarded boats from Mauritania.

One of them, Abid Hussain, a 39-year-old Pakistani told Reuters he arrived on the Canary Islands in October after a five-day sea journey from Mauritania. Prior to embarking on the trip, he told Reuters he had attempted to apply for a visa for Italy for two years, but had been refused. He said his wife and children had emigrated to Italy in 2023 and he had been hoping to join them.

“There is no future in Pakistan. European life is easier for children,” Hussein told Reuters, saying he came from a “poor family.”

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South Asian migrants on the Canary Islands

According to Frontex data, between January and August 2024, 91 Pakistanis reached the Canary Islands, an increase from just four registered arrivals in all of 2023.

Spanish officials told the news agency at the time that they were “worried” that sporadic arrivals from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen could indicate a permanent shift in migration routes. The tighter controls by the Libyan authorities might have pushed the focus of travel further west, they believed.

Now the Spanish authorities are trying to begin negotiating agreements with countries like Pakistan, similar to those they already hold with Senegal, Mauritania and Gambia, to ensure future returns, and perhaps increased policing of those who might be leaving via irregular routes directly from Pakistan.

In December last year, the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia also reported that arrivals of migrants from South Asia, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and to a lesser extent Afghans, as well as Syrians, were becoming “increasingly common” in 2024.

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Prosecutors accuse smugglers of ‘reinventing traditional routes’

A number of factors, the newspaper reported, may be driving the change in migration routes. These include stricter visa and border controls in countries such as Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Croatia, along with pressure from the EU via Italy on Libya and Algeria to strengthen their border controls. Additionally, the widely publicized drowning of over 300 Pakistanis in 2023, when a fishing boat sank off the coast of Greece, has prompted smuggling networks to “reinvent the traditional routes that used to lead Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to Europe,” according to La Vanguardia.

Teseida Garcia, a deputy prosecutor for human trafficking and immigration on the Canary Islands, told La Vanguardia that, based on information from a Bangladeshi citizen, authorities had managed to “unravel the modus operandi of the mafias facilitating the entry of Asians to the Canary Islands.”

Garcia reportedly told La Vanguardia in a phone conversation that most migrants would fly initially from Pakistan to the UAE or Qatar. She said most people taking this route were hoping to reach Europe for economic reasons and paid more money to reduce the danger by flying much of the way. However, the final step, across the Atlantic, is one of the most deadly and dangerous crossings there are, due to both the distance and the currents and weather patterns in the Atlantic.

From the Middle East, migrants then fly to Senegal, and cross the land border from Senegal to Mauritania, up until November, no visa was required to cross between these two countries, reports La Vanguardia.

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‘Slave labor’

According to the public prosecutor, the Asian smuggling gangs then subcontract to local gangs in North Africa to ensure the last leg of the journey by sea. Once in Africa, many of the Asian migrants, are reportedly exploited by the gangs and forced to work, purportedly to fund the last leg of their journey. They say they often end up as “slave labor” in businesses owned by gang leaders in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott.

According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, many of those on board the capsized boat off Western Sahara had also reportedly suffered torture before boarding the boat. It was not reported at the hands of whom.

The Spanish national police have been working with its Mauritanian counterparts to dismantle several of the locations where migrants tend to be held before boarding the boats for the final crossing.

At the end of summer, a boat carrying 174 people, including 48 Pakistanis, arrived on the Canary Islands, followed in October by another vessel with 76 migrants, including 65 Pakistanis and some Afghans. In late November, Mauritanian police arrested 125 Pakistani migrants in Nouakchott who reportedly intended to reach the Canary Islands.

Some boats that have set off from the coasts of West Africa have even ended up weeks or months later in the Caribbean, with just dead bodies on board. Other migrants who have managed to arrive on the Canary Islands have reported fellow travelers dying en route, or even passing “ghost ships” in the Atlantic with just corpses of those who perhaps lost their way and died of thirst and hunger before reaching land.

InfoMigrants asked the Pakistani embassy in Morocco for comment on this new route and any additional information they might have regarding the Pakistani survivors involved in the latest incident, but at the time of publication had not yet received a response.

With Reuters, AP