Article written in cooperation with Adrian Luncke, part of our CPG Team and representative of OEW – Organisation für Eine solidarische Welt
Our List of Refugee Deaths has 66.519 names on it.
Numbers are important: they make us understand the consequences. We must precisely measure the outcomes of our decisions, policies, and behaviors. When we examine Mediterranean migration policies, do the death tolls and missing persons increase or decrease under different approaches? What insights do these statistical comparisons provide, and how should we adapt our policies based on this data?
By now, it is well established that the end of Italy’s Operation Mare Nostrum and its replacement by Triton and Frontex led to a significant increase in the number of deaths per crossing in the Mediterranean in 2015.
Similarly, the EU–Turkey deal in 2016* pushed migrants toward more dangerous and deadly routes. Such policies may intervene on the number of arrivals, but not on the number of crossing’s attempts…
Numbers form the foundation of moral and political responsibility.
Yet numbers are inherently abstract. They transform individual human beings into statistical data points, making them difficult to evaluate meaningfully. Is one death already one too many? Does 66,519 deaths constitute a catastrophe? The abstraction creates distance from human reality.
Consider this scenario: Standing at the shoreline, if I witnessed a child drowning before me, wouldn’t I jump in to save them—assuming conditions allowed me to help without risking my own life or serious injury from turbulent waters and dangerous rocks? If I weren’t alone, and there was a mother with her child in the water, wouldn’t I expect the person beside me to help in our rescue attempt? What if five people were drowning while several others stood watching from shore?
This raises a fundamental question: Why does our moral intuition seem to shift when we discuss 1,000 or 2,000 people at sea instead of one? Where exactly is the turning point? At what moment do individual persons—each valuable in their own right—become perceived as merely a “mass”? And why do we, as nations and societies, then justify creating barriers rather than saving every single life?
The list has numbers but also names in it.
Names are deeply tied to personal histories. But do we know the 66,519 names of those lost? Can we read or pronounce them? What do these names truly signify?
Names are usually given by family members—parents or close relatives—at the start of a person’s life. They often carry meaning: sometimes profound, sometimes symbolic, reflecting hopes, values, or beliefs held by those who chose them. Names may connect to family history, religious faith, or cultural traditions. They can also have an aesthetic appeal, chosen because they sound beautiful to the giver. In all these ways, names create connections. The stories of the name-giver, the bearer, and those who hear the name become intertwined.
Names place individuals within social networks—networks that, at least initially, are often caring and protective.
However, names are usually not chosen by the individuals themselves. They are brief and general—many people share the same name—and names sometimes feel inadequate or ill-fitting. Names are limited; they represent one of the first “building blocks” of a person’s identity and social ties. Personal stories grow around these foundations. While people have some freedom to shape their life stories, this freedom varies widely depending on privilege.
Being forced to leave your home disrupts your narrative.
For this reason we give meaning to the list when we take care of the stories it carries, even when it’s a lost one. It has to become the symbol of our collective loss. Because the story of a person does not begin at the border crossing but perhaps when they receive a name. It unfolds through many experiences within a particular context. Eventually, circumstances such as war or persecution compel a person to make a life-altering choice: to become a refugee and face numerous existential threats, to heavily change or leave behind their original story and create a new one.
𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟲𝟲,𝟱𝟭𝟵 𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿: 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗿!
