News Deeply | 16.02.2017
There is no official record of the number of refugees who go missing crossing the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe. Ingeborg Eliassen of the Investigate Europe network explores why a European database of migrant deaths does not exist.
Ingeborg Eliassen
MYTILINI, GREECE – Along an empty corridor, a handwritten note that reads “Register marriages, deaths, births here” signposts the cramped office of Aphrodite Andrikou, a municipal registrar in Mytilini, the capital of the Greek island of Lesbos.
There have been an awful lot of deaths to register on this island lately. In the early months of 2016, the cooling container outside Mytlini’s hospital was often full, and staff had to lay dead bodies inside the building.
Andrikou and her two colleagues have worked many long evenings and missed many family Sunday lunches to fill out all the death protocols since late 2015.