EU funding for Serbian reception centres veiled by secrecy
“In camp, they feed us pork… do they not know we are Muslims?”
Ahmed*, a Moroccan in his early twenties, asked me this outside Collective Aid’s WASH centre in Belgrade. The centre is a unique spot in the city for people on the move, where we offer laundry services and hot showers for free to those passing through Serbia’s capital. It was not the first time I was asked a question like this, nor was it the first time I was stumped for an answer.
Like several other WASH service users, Ahmed had just had his first hot shower in weeks. He was smoking a cigarette outside the centre and waiting for a few friends who were still showering.
The ‘camp’ in question refers to Obrenovac Reception Centre, a state-run accommodation centre for refugees and people on the move passing through Belgrade. Obrenovac is one of 14 EU-funded centres of this type in Serbia. Conditions there are inadequate at best, and the lack of information available on the camp keeps its reality hidden from public knowledge.
Ahmed, like others stuck in Obrenovac camp, is not there by choice. Their stories are seldom heard.
Screenshot highlighting the distance between the Belgrade City Center bus station and Obrenovac town.
Located in the small town of Obrenovac, the Reception Centre is 31km from Belgrade’s city centre. The journey takes over an hour, and the only bus route is not found on Google Maps.
The centre is a former military barracks, converted in 2017 to accommodate Belgrade’s increasing numbers of refugees and displaced people. The Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migrants states that the barracks were provided “in order to relocate migrants away from the inhumane conditions in Belgrade parks to an adequate accommodation.”
However, the centre’s remote location and its inaccessibility beg the question of whether it is a humane effort to offer shelter or a deliberate attempt to further isolate people from Belgrade’s city centre.
The camp itself is an unremarkable cluster of buildings arranged around a sad-looking sports pitch. Signs around the entrance boast of the camp's funding and support from the EU. It isn't publicised within the European Union, but sizable sums have been invested in Obrenovac and similar camps for years.
In a 2016 report on the most successful EU-funded projects in Serbia published by Belgrade's EU Info Centre, "EU Assistance to Refugees and Migrants'' is listed as a major success story. The piece details a €7m investment from the EU in 2015-16 to "support Serbia’s national and local authorities and institutions in increasing their operational capabilities and the capacity to coordinate the assistance." In 2019-20 alone, the EU funded a €3.2 million reconstruction project in Obrenovac.
Despite the huge sums invested by the EU, information about conditions in the camp is almost nonexistent. NGOs and members of the general public are not allowed to enter the camp without special permission. And the rules on how to gain this special permission are deliberately vague and unclear.
Contacting camp authorities to find this information is nearly impossible. There are no email addresses, no contact details for staff members, nor up-to-date information on conditions in Obrenovac. The most recent information about Obrenovac’s population available on an official government website was last updated in January 2019.
Such secrecy prevents anyone from truly knowing what conditions are like there and could provide cover for mistreatment and abuse. What little we know about life in the camp comes largely from the testimonies of those staying there. From these, we can piece together an image of what life is like for those who stay there.
At least once a week, we hear accounts of overcrowding and of people being denied entry to these state-run centres. Individuals from particular African countries such as Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea report being turned down from the camp and are often told the centre is "only for Afghans."
Strict rules are in place for entering and leaving Obrenovac, and if people try to leave or re-enter outside their allotted hours, they will not be let in. People who leave for more than a few days will have their camp ID card invalidated and will have to restart the gruelling process of registering.
And then, there is Ahmed's comment about Muslims being fed pork. It feels near impossible that in a camp composed almost exclusively of Muslim men, a mistake of this scale would be a genuine blunder.
This is where EU taxpayers' money goes. It is helping to fund a secretive centre where reliable information is severely lacking, where certain nationalities are turned away, where charities aren’t welcome, and where residents are served food they cannot eat.
From the field, Collective Aid’s team in Belgrade are among the few humanitarian actors who see the reality of those passing through Serbia’s capital and staying in the Obrenovac camp. In an increasingly hostile city, centres like Collective Aid's WASH centre in Belgrade are important safe spaces and offer much-needed services for refugees and people on the move.
* Names have been changed to ensure anonymity
Words by Monica Thorne, July 2023