The idea was bold from its inception: Attempting to count dead and missing migrants worldwide. Paris enterprise writer Lori Hinnant noticed a lack of data after covering the outflow of refugees from the Islamic State takeover in parts of Iraq last year, and set off on a mission to count the uncountable.
AP's resulting team effort found 56,800 dead and missing migrants since 2014, almost double the number currently put out by the United Nations, which focuses heavily on Europe and nearly excludes several other areas of the world.
The yearlong effort to document lives that would otherwise go unnoticed proved extremely challenging, precisely because it was plowing such new ground. An AP team of more than a dozen people painstakingly compiled information that had never been put together before from international groups, forensic records, missing persons reports and death records, and went through data from thousands of interviews with migrants. Hinnant developed a database with advice from Angel Kastanis from the data team, going through entries individually to prevent double-counting as far as possible. The first few months of the project were spent finding gaps in the data and trying to think creatively about how to fill them accurately. The methodology evolved with an eye toward generating a real count of lives cut short or disappeared, rather than less ambitious estimates of the cost of migration.
At her home in the town of Ras Jabal, Bizerte, Tunisia, April 12, 2018, Fathia Jejli holds a photo of her son, Hossam Edin Jejli, right, and her nephew, Hamed Ben Brayek, who went missing in 2011. The AP has documented at least 56,800 migrants dead or missing worldwide from 2014 to 2018 – almost double the number found in the world’s only official attempt to count them, by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Women whose sons went missing look at the shoreline in the town of Ras Jabal, Bizerte, Tunisia, April 12, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Wrecked boats that have carried migrants are strewn on the shore at the coastal city Monastir, Tunisia, April 16, 2018. Often the tides of the Mediterranean bring ashore the bodies and belongings of others who attempted a similar migration – those from distant countries who hoped that the beaches of North Africa would be their last stop before Europe.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Sofia Al Bahari sits with a photo of her son, Majdi Barhoumi, who went missing in 2011, at her home in the town of Ras Jabal, Bizerte, Tunisia, April 12, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
The "Cemetery of the Unknown" which holds bodies of migrants who were found dead on the shores near the southern port town of Zarzis, Tunisia, shown April 15, 2018. The bodies are retrieved by retired fisherman Chamsedding Marzouk, who has made it his life's work to provide a proper burial to the foreigners even though virtually all die without a name.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
A sign identifies the "Cemetery of the Unknown" where migrants who were found dead on nearby shores are buried, in at the southern port town of Zarzis, Tunisia, April 15, 2018.
AP Photo / Nariman El-Mofty
Migrants, beside the bodies of other migrants in the Mediterranean Sea north of Sabratha, Libya, July 25, 2017, wait to be rescued by aid workers from a Spanish NGO.
AP Photo / Santi Palacios
The body of an unidentified woman washes up on a beach at the village of Skala, on the Greek island of Lesbos, Nov. 1, 2015. Authorities recovered bodies on Lesbos and the Greek island of Samos on this day as thousands continued to cross from the nearby coast of Turkey despite worsening weather.
AP Photo / Santi Palacios
The body of an unidentified woman wearing a wedding ring lies on a beach at the village of Skala, on the Greek island of Lesbos, Nov. 1, 2015.
AP Photo / Santi Palacios
The wreckage of a fishing boat that capsized off the coast of Libya lies outside at the NATO base in the Sicilian town of Mellili, Italy, Oct. 8, 2016. A team of forensic pathologists have volunteered to identify and catalogue roughly 800 migrants who lost their lives in one of the worst tragedies in the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
AP Photo / Salvatore Cavalli
The belongings of a dead migrant found on a boat that sank in Lampedusa, Italy, on Oct. 13, 2013, are displayed during the art exhibition "La Terra Inquieta" (Restless Earth) at the Triennale in Milan, Italy, April 27, 2017. Through the works of over 60 international artists, the exhibit examined transformations around the world, particularly addressing the problem of migration and the crisis of refugees.
AP Photo / Luca Bruno
The casket of one of the migrants that died when their boat capsized off in the Canal of Sicily is lifted by crane to an Italian Navy ship at the Lampedusa island harbor, Oct. 12, 2013. A fishing boat packed with 500 African migrants capsized off the island on Oct. 3, 2013, causing more than 300 deaths.
AP Photo / Mauro Buccarello
Almass, an 18-year-old Afghan who lost his younger brother at the Iran-Turkey border four years ago, traces the path of his migration to Europe, at his new home in Gentioux-Pigerolles, France, Oct. 6, 2018. Asia has the world's largest overall population movements, but also has the least information on the fate of those who disappear after leaving their homelands.
AP Photo / Lori Hinnant
A hand print in honoring of migrants that have been killed or are missing is seen on a border wall structure separating Tijuana, Mexico from San Diego, in Tijuana on Oct. 16, 2018.
AP Photo / Gregory Bull
Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team experts work at a lab in Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, March 23, 2018, analyzing recovered bone fragments of victims who were dissolved or burned in drums. Selected fragments are sent to the team's laboratory in Argentina and hoped to be used as trial evidence.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Pablo Reyes holds a cell phone showing a photo of an unidentified skull that was discovered in the Arizona desert, while joined by family members at the Human Rights State Commission office in Chihuahua, Mexico, March 22, 2018. Two brothers-in-law related to Reyes, Armando Reyes and Juan Lorenzo Luna, went missing together in the Arizona desert as they tried to make it to the U.S. in 2016.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
Before testifying before a human rights commission in Chihuahua, Mexico, on March 22, 2018, relatives look at photos of Armando Reyes, who disappeared in the Arizona desert in 2016.
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
A man killed in a mob justice incident in Johannesburg is recovered for transport to a mortuary, Jan. 28, 2018.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
Mortuary workers lower the coffin of an unidentified male into a pauper grave at a Olifantsvlei cemetery outside Johannesburg., April 12, 2018. At least five coffins are placed on top of each other in each grave.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
The body of an unidentified man lies on a gurney at a mortuary in the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, Jan. 28, 2018. This is South Africa's busiest morgue, with 3,000 bodies being investigated every year. Ten per cent of those remain unclaimed and unidentified.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
A pathologist takes fingerprints of an unidentified male for forensic examination at a mortuary in the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, April 18, 2018. Fingerprints are sent to a database of the South Africa police. If no match is found, the bodies get buried in pauper graves.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
A worker extracts a sample from the body of an unidentified man's body for DNA analysis, at the mortuary in the Hillbrow neighborhood of Johannesburg, Jan. 24, 2018.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
Zimbabwean migrant Banele Nkomo holds a photograph of her missing brother, Francis, in Johannesburg, Aug. 24, 2018. She doesn't know what happened to him and hasn't heard from him for years. She says she misses him every day and wants to know whether he passed away and where his body is, in order to find closure.
The road leads to the Olifantsvlei cemetery outside Johannesburg, Oct. 3, 2018. Unidentified bodies are buried here in pauper graves.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
The marker for a pauper grave at the Olifantsvlei cemetery outside Johannesburg, Oct. 3, 2018. At least five bodies of unidentified people are buried in each grave.
AP Photo / Bram Janssen
The data came alive with individual stories of migrants, a challenge in itself. The team focused on stories from Tunisia, South Africa, Mexico, France and Colombia, and produced separate stories for four different regions – Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe – to give AP's clients flexibility. Istanbul visual journalist Bram Janssen and Cairo photographer Nariman El-Mofty did separate photo essays to capture different perspectives on the story, Janssen out of South Africa and El-Mofty out of Tunisia. Janssen also put together a separate video piece just on South Africa, where he found records for more than 4,300 migrants from 2014 to 2017 whose bodies lay unnamed in one province alone.
Digital producer Nat Castañeda organized presentations of the story both on APNews.com and the AP Images blog and built several video vignettes featuring Janssen’s drone footage that allowed readers to dive deeper into the individual regions. Meanwhile, Global News and Enterprise Editor Raghu Vadarev, organized the work into a hub on APNews.
The project, relying on the breadth of the AP, also saw significant contributions from Jim Gomez, Mehdi El Arem, Niniek Karmini, Christine Armario, Peter Hamlin, Maria Verza, Ariana Cubillos, Kristen Gelineau, Lotfi Bouchouchi, Angeliki Kastanis and more. International Enterprise Editor Mary Rajkumar coordinated the project.
The project drew significant interest, despite the fact that it ran six days before the U.S. midterm elections. The International Organization for Migration called to find out more about how AP put together the database, and will use our information to update the UN numbers for missing and dead migrants. Poynter called the story "an audacious idea" with "a devastating result," while Hinnant did interviews with European media. On APNews, the story made the top 10 with nearly two minutes of reader engagement.
Brian Carovillano said the project combined “strong investigative reporting that breaks news with compelling characters, human drama and great visual elements. This is the kind of journalism that stands apart from the noise of the daily news cycle and gets people talking, and thinking.”
For their ambitious project that established AP as a global authority on this issue, Hinnant, Janssen and El-Mofty share the Best of the Week award.