A/HRC/59/49 I. Introduction 1. The present report is submitted to the fifty-ninth session of the Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Gehad Madi, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 76/172 and Human Rights Council resolution 52/20. 2. In the report, the Special Rapporteur addresses the ever-increasing number of migrants who go missing and who face preventable deaths and disappearances, including enforced disappearance, along migratory routes worldwide. In addition, the Special Rapporteur outlines the activities he has undertaken from October 2024 through March 2025. 3. The phenomenon of preventable deaths and disappearance of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are a tragic and largely underrated and neglected human rights issue. Policies and enhanced intergovernmental cooperation among countries of origin, transit and destination are urgently needed to effectively protect migrants and prevent their disappearance, including enforced disappearance. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded that, between 2014 and 2024, more than 73,000 migrants have died or gone missing while migrating to an international destination, including nearly 4,000 children.1 Many more such cases remain unrecorded and invisible. 4. Cases of migrants and refugees going missing or being subjected to disappearance, including enforced disappearance, can be attributed to various factors, including the lack of sufficient and accessible safe, orderly and regular migratory pathways because of increasingly restrictive migration policies and quasi-generalized levels of impunity. 2 The militarization, externalization, securitization and criminalization of migration prevents migrants from reaching their countries of destination in a safe, regular and legal manner, rendering asylum applications and further human rights protections out of reach.3 5. Other factors include the often arduous geographical conditions encountered along remote migratory routes, with limited or no access to humanitarian assistance; lack of basic needs, such as adequate shelter, food and water; lack of access for those in need of medical care; dangerous transportation conditions; and lack of access to means of communication to call for assistance in emergency situations. Moreover, it is not always possible to identify or to repatriate the remains of deceased migrants owing to lack of adequate search and forensic identification mechanisms. 6. Migrants may also disappear as a result of immigration detention or removal procedures, including through agreements with third countries or through the use of deportation flights that fail to respect applicable procedural safeguards. 4 Such procedures include: the systematic separation of families at international borders and in detention centres; collective expulsions without individual assessments of protection needs, known as “pushbacks”; and the lack of political will and/or capacity and possible delays in conducting search and rescue operations for migrants in distress, oftentimes at sea and in the desert. 5 Migrants also disappear as a result of smuggling and/or trafficking, often by criminal groups, including, in some cases, with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State. 6 7. In the report, the term “migrants” includes all individuals who have crossed an international border, regardless of their migration status, to reside in a country for more than 12 months. 7 It encompasses forcibly displaced persons, including asylum-seekers and refugees, as well as those compelled to move for other reasons, including economic, labour and climatic, whether through regular or irregular channels. 8 Enforced disappearance “is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2 See International Organization for Migration (IOM), Missing Migrants Project (https://missingmigrants.iom.int). A/72/335, para. 10; and A/HRC/47/30, para. 44. A/72/335, paras. 10–12. See also definition of externalization in A/HRC/23/46, para. 55. A/HRC/36/39/Add.2, paras. 20 and 23. For the definition of international borders, see A/69/277, footnote 6. Committee on Enforced Disappearances, general comment No. 1 (2023), para. 6. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division, Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration (Rev.1) (United Nations, 1998). A/HRC/56/54, para. 6.