UN says crossing has highest death rate of any major migrant sea route

The two vessels both appeared to be heading toward Malaysia, an IOM spokeswoman said. The journey across the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal toward Malaysia and Indonesia has in recent years seen more deaths than any maritime crossing other than the Mediterranean and the route between West Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands, the U.N. said.

Last year, 860 of the 6,500 Rohingya refugees who attempted the perilous journey were reported missing or dead, according to data from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. That figure represents the highest mortality rate of any major migrant sea route globally, the agency said.

The two most recent ships departed Rakhine state outside the normal sailing season, when torrential rains and flooding make the journey especially dangerous. In late March, another ship sank with an estimated 260 people on board, the U.N. said.

Some of those on the latest boats had come from Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the world’s largest refugee camp, where more than one million Rohingya live. The camp’s population swelled after more than 700,000 Rohingya — a Muslim minority group that had been denied citizenship and other rights in Myanmar — fled the country in 2017 amid a military-led campaign of murder, rape and arson that the U.S. considers a genocide. Myanmar has denied that its actions amount to genocide.

Conditions in the camp have deteriorated as humanitarian assistance has been reduced. Following the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development by the Trump administration and funding cuts by other Western governments, aid groups have slashed rations for food-insecure refugees to as little as $7 a month. Refugees are not permitted to work outside the camps and have few prospects of returning to Myanmar, where fighting in Rakhine state has intensified since the military’s 2021 coup.

In recent years, a growing number of those attempting the sea journey have been unaccompanied children, according to U.N. officials. MSI previously reported that hundreds of migrants have vanished in the Mediterranean as authorities withheld data on shipwrecks and rescues.