Tamara Last MSc, VU University Amsterdam
12 May 2015
WHAT IS IT?
The Deaths at the Borders Database is an ‘evidence-base’ derived from official sources generated by the death management systems of Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta and Greece. It aims to fill some of the gaps, and serve as a new, complementary resource to enable further analysis and research, and ultimately to move the discussions about border deaths forward towards concrete recommendations and policy changes.
We have begun to explore the data and consider their relevance to policy. This is only a first step in a five year project based at VU University Amsterdam, which is investigating a broad range of questions concerning border policies and migrant mortality along EU borders.
We are publishing the data online, as soon as we finish compiling it, because we believe that this information is important and should be available to the public for research and humanitarian purposes alike.
TERMS OF USE
Please ensure that you cite where you got the data from when you use it:
APA citation: Last, Tamara (2015, May 12) Deaths at the Borders: Database for the Southern EU, retrieved from http://www.borderdeaths.org/?page_id=425 on [INSERT DATE YOU DOWNLOADED THE DATABASE]
DATA AVAILABLE
We are releasing two versions of the database, which can be downloaded below.
Public Version
This is an anonymized but detailed version of the Deaths at the Borders Database for the Southern EU for public use. The data contained in this version matches closely the information we retrieved from the documents we searched; we have only translated, organized and standardized some of the written language to make it understandable.
Contents:
- Location (the country, region and (primary) town from which the data was retrieved)
- Year (we used the following dates to assign a year to each case (in order of preference): date of death, date found, date of autopsy, date of inquiry, date of registration)
- Case number (we have assigned individual numbers to each case that refer to the country, the registry where the data was collected, and the number of the case)
- Procedural information, including: the date and place of registration, the date of inquiry/investigation into the death and the official body responsible for that inquiry/investigation, the date and institute of the forensic medical examination, whether the person was identified or not, known details about the identification, date of burial/burial authorization/repatriation of the body and final place of burial
- Information about the person, including: the label used to describe the (usually unidentified) cadaver in official documents, sex, age (as stated or calculated from date of birth), estimated age (usually based on the medical examination), stated country of nationality, country of birth, country of last residence, presumed ethnicity/race (as described in the documents), personal items found with the body, and noted features of the person
- Information about the death, including: date and place of death (as recorded in the documents; this may refer to the place the death was officially declared such as the port, or it may refer to the jurisdiction or to a specific place where the body was found), date and place the body was found (as recorded in the documents), circumstances in which the body was found, and how long the person was estimated to be dead before the body was found/examined
- Information about the incident, including: the place and assigned number of the incident (a shipwreck or crossing involving more than one death, that we found), and details of the incident (as recorded in the documents)
- Cause of death, including: primary cause of death, secondary cause of death, and other information regarding the cause of death or condition of the body
- Source(s) used in completing the data for that person (death certificates were the primary source of data for the Database), but in some places these were not available or not sufficient and so other archives were searched such as coroners archives and cemetery registers)
- Certainty rating (each case is classified as either 1-confirmed, 2-likely, or 3-possible, according to specific criteria
The public version is available as a complete file in English. Datasets for Spain, Italy and Greece have been translated into the original languages of the documents from which the information was retrieved.
We have spent much time and utmost care to avoiding errors in the published data. Notwithstanding this, we cannot exclude the possibility that errors have occurred. If you think you have noticed one, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact form
A new version of the same data was released on 28 June 2016. For this update, we removed all irregularities in the data, added new functionalities in the Excel and wrote a metadata document to increase usability of the data and to make it easier to compare the data with other sources of information concerning border deaths.
Base de datos de inmigrantes fallecidos en la frontera sur UE – ESPANA- versión pública 12 mayo 2015 (Translated by Ignacio Urquijo)
Θάνατοι στα Σύνορα Βάση Δεδομένων για το Νότο της Ε.Ε. – Ελλάδα – δημόσια έκδοση 12 Μαΐου 2015 (Translated by Nefeli Bami)
Banca dati delle morti ai confini meridionali dell’UE – ITALIA – versione pubblica 12 maggio 2015 (Translated by Giorgia Mirto)
Visualisation Version
This is a simplified, coded version of the Deaths at the Borders Database for the Southern EU created for the interactive visualization.
Contents:
- Case number (we have assigned individual numbers to each case that refer to the country, the registry where the data was collected, and the number of the case)
- Place and assigned number of the incident (a shipwreck or crossing involving more than one death, that we found)
- Whether the person has been identified by the relevant authorities or not
- Sex (where the person was identified but the sex was missing, if the gender of the name was clear we guessed the sex)
- Age (where the person’s age was estimated as a range – eg 18-25 years – we used the average of this range)
- Origin (we classified all cases that had information about nationality, place of birth, place of residence or race/ethnicity, into one of five regions of origin: North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa (including the Horn of Africa), Middle East, Asia, and Balkans)
- Year (we used the following dates to assign a year to each case (in order of preference): date of death, date found, date of autopsy, date of inquiry, date of registration)
- Cause of death (we classified all cases that had information about cause of death under six categories: drowning, dehydration/starvation, cardiorespiratory arrest, hypothermia, injuries/violence, and suffocation)
- Country and town where the person’s death was recorded and GPS coordinates of that place
FULL ENGLISH VISUALISATION VERSION
Key for Deaths at the Borders Database for Southern EU – visualisation version 12 May 2015
