A new report has placed a spotlight on the migrant smuggling business and other illicit activities running through the Western Balkans, including drugs and money laundering. The report estimates that the migrant smuggling business alone could be worth up to €50 million per year in the region.
A Balkans-based network of human rights groups has released a report on pushbacks against migrants in Greece and Croatia. It claims that systematic violence by Croatian and Greek authorities often amounts to "torture or inhuman and degrading treatment."
The German Red Cross has announced a new emergency aid project to support migrants and refugees in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hundreds of migrants continue to transit the country en route to the European Union.
UNICEF and Save the Children said that in the four months that their joint border program has been active, they have provided assistance to more than 130 families and 570 unaccompanied minors in Ventimiglia and Lampedusa.
The number of undocumented migrants arriving in Europe, especially via the eastern Mediterranean Sea route, has decreased, according to the EU border agency. At the same time, more are making the crossing from North Africa.
A large number of migrants, including children, were discovered on a road in northeastern Italy last week. Most of the migrants were Pakistani nationals who had traveled the "Balkan route."
Migrants and refugees in Bosnian camps are becoming infected with COVID-19 at an increasing rate. Humanitarian workers say most cases are mild and the situation is "under control."
Croatian police are investigating reports that an Afghan woman was sexually harassed at the country’s border with Bosnia-Herzegovina in the middle of February. She says she was held at knife-point and asked to strip naked whilst being touched by officers.
The IOM in Bosnia has called for the international community to take "urgent action to end violent pushbacks and collective expulsions of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, including minors, along the Croatian border with Bosnia Herzegovina."
Since 2019, around a dozen migrants have been buried in the Humci cemetery in Bihac, but almost none of the graves are marked with names. Although authorities haven’t always been able to establish their identities, they have always determined their cause of death: None of them died "of natural causes."
In the town of Velika Kledusa, most migrants have only one ambition: to get to Croatia and continue their journey to western Europe. Some of them have already attempted the crossing more than twenty times. Each time they try, they risk being pushed back by force by Croatian police.
In northwestern Bosnia, dozens of migrants and refugees at two reception centers have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to local authorities. Meanwhile, Catholic charity Caritas denounced an alleged outbreak at the Lipa migrant camp.