Report: 40,000 migrant deaths worldwide since 2000

Every day, refugees and migrants risk their lives as they seek a new life. Now, a new report from the International Organization for Migration has put a figure to the number of victims: at least 40,000 deaths since 2000, CNN reported.

More than half of those who died -- some 22,000 -- were trying to get to Europe, the IOM said.

Nearly 6,000 more migrant deaths occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border and another 3,000 deaths from migration routes including Africa's Sahara Desert and the waters of the Indian Ocean, according to the group's research.

"Our message is blunt: migrants are dying who need not," said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing.

"It is time to do more than count the number of victims. It is time to engage the world to stop this violence against desperate migrants."

The IOM report, published Monday and titled "Fatal Journeys -- Tracking Lives Lost during Migration," puts the number of those killed trying to reach Europe at nearly 4,000 since the start of 2013.

More than three-quarters of those victims died in the first nine months of this year, many of them drowning after being trafficked in unseaworthy vessels from the shores of the Middle East and North Africa across the Mediterranean.

Two shipwrecks off the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa last October, in which more than 400 migrants died, made headlines around the world and prompted calls for action.