Boat tragedy off Mayotte - confirmed deaths, missing
Briefing Notes, 9 October 2012
This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 9 October 2012, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Six people are confirmed drowned and ten are still missing after a small vessel carrying 24 people capsized in the early hours of Monday off the French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. This is the second such tragedy in a month. It brings to 69 the number of people reported dead or missing in such incidents off Mayotte so far this year.
The capsizing is a reminder of the risks faced by people desperate to escape poverty, conflict and persecution. As in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden, the seas around Mayotte are the scene of irregular movements of migrants and refugees searching for a better life or protection from persecution and war.
For decades, people have been using small open vessels known as "kwassa-kwassa" to sail from the Union of the Comoros to the more prosperous French territory of Mayotte. Most of these movements take place without the requisite documentation and involve considerable risk to those attempting them. Asylum seekers account for a small proportion of these movements but their numbers have been increasing in the last two years.
Last year, there were some 1200 applications for asylum in Mayotte, 41 per cent more than in 2010. The largest proportion of applicants came from the Union of the Comoros (90 per cent), with citizens from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Rwanda and Burundi, accounting for the rest.
For further information on this topic, please contact:
- In Paris: William Spindler on mobile: +33 62 316 1178
- In Geneva: Sybella Wilkes on mobile +41 79 557 91 38
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Regional Stakeholder Conferences
- Regional Conference on Refugee Protection and International Migration in Central Asia
(Almaty, Kazakhstan, 15-16 March 2011)
- Regional Conference on Mixed Movements and Irregular Migration from the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region to Southern Africa
(Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania, 6-7 September 2010)
- Regional Conference on Refugee Protection and International Migration in the Americas: Protection Considerations in the Context of Mixed Migration
(San José, Costa Rica, 19-20 November 2009)
- Regional Conference on "Refugee Protection and International Migration in the Gulf of Aden"
(Sana'a, Yemen, 19-20 May 2008)
- Regional Conference on Refugee Protection and International Migration in West Africa
(Dakar, Senegal, 13-14 November 2008)
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Chad Mission Photo Gallery
Chad Mission Photo Gallery
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Last week, staff from the museum, UNHCR and the Fédération des Associations d'Anciens du Scoutisme gathered up the toys and packed them into 60 boxes. They were then flown to Turkey by Aviation Sans Frontières (Aviation without Borders) and taken to the kindergarten and nursery schools in Nizip-1 and Nizip-2 camps near the city of Gaziantep.
A gift from more fortunate children in the French capital, the toys brought a ray of sunshine into the lives of some young Syrian refugees and reminded them that their peers in the outside world do care.
These images of the toy distribution were taken by photographer Aytac Akad and UNHCR's Selin Unal.
From Paris With Love, Toys for Syrian Children
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