Representatives of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights participated in ECRE Annual General Conference in Berlin, from 12 to 14 October. ECRE, an alliance of 90 organisations in 38 countries protecting refugee rights across Europe, expresses deep concerns about Europe’s growing emphasis on externalization of migration control, which has now moved center stage. The EU is outsourcing its responsibilities on refugee protection and giving financial incentives to countries to stop refugees reaching Europe. Making deals with countries with poor human rights records will not address the root causes of why people flee and it leaves refugees in life threatening situations, ECRE states during its Annual General Conference in Berlin. (more…)

The United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the New York Declaration for refugees and Migrants at a historic summit that was held on 19 September 2016. The Declaration reflects political will for to improve the protection of refugees, especially regarding responsibility sharing. However, the Declaration is a product of compromise and therefore it has a large number of shortcomings, especially obvious are the indecisiveness on certain issues and weak proposed solutions and as such the Declaration is largely seen only as the beginning of a new dialogue that should lead to the adoption of a more substantial Global compact on refugee rights in 2018. (more…)

Representatives of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights participated in the seminar Social Innovation for Refugee Inclusion in Brussels. Seminar was organized by theEuropean Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) in cooperation with Council of Europe and the U.S. Embassy to the European Union. (more…)

In the implementation of their international obligations, European and EU states have devised sophisticated asylum systems based on complex procedural tools. In some cases, tools are designed and used for the purpose of avoiding responsibility for refugees, because they allow claims to be dismissed as inadmissible before looking at the substance of the claim. The recent EU-Turkey deal and the European Commission’s proposal for harmonised asylum procedures under an Asylum Procedures Regulation, for instance, revolve around concepts such as “safe third country” and “first country of asylum”. (more…)