Western Indian Ocean Route

The Western Indian Ocean route, from East Africa, Madagascar, and the Comoros Islands to Mayotte, part of France, is an important route for maritime migrants and refugees. This includes people departing from the Great Lakes region of Africa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi) via Tanzania and the Comoros, and Malagasy coming from Madagascar; there is also a long history of Comorians coming to Mayotte.  

This remains a poorly understood route for which FHAS and other actors continue to try to gather better data. Numbers of people travelling are difficult to estimate, but authorities deported 22,000 people to the Comoros in 2023 and arrested 7,839 people at sea in 2022. These numbers suggest that annual maritime arrivals are well into the thousands, with an uncertain number of deaths.  

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