Almost every week, the bodies of people on the move are being recovered from Bosnia-Herzegovina’s borders. On the week beginning August 19th, these bodies included that of a baby girl called Lana, no older than nine months, and her mother.

Lana and her mother drowned after their boat, which was reportedly carrying around thirty people, capsized on the Drina River marking the border between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The boat capsized on August 22nd and to date twelve bodies have been recovered from the disaster, among them 15-year-old Mustafa and 20-year-old Ammar, both from Syria.

Photograph taken by Collective Aid of the Drina River between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The story of Lana, Mustafa and Ammar is unfortunately not unique. In July 2024 alone, a body was reported recovered each week from rivers and lakes in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the borders of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. On July 14th, the body of a man was recovered from the same river where Lana, Mustafa and Abdulwahed would lose their lives just five weeks later. In the past ten years, at least forty people on the move have drowned in the deadly Drina River whilst trying to enter Bosnia-Herzegovina; likely an underestimate this number now continues to grow each month.

The reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina

For those originating from Syria, like Mustafa and Ammar, seeking asylum upon arrival in Bosnia-Herzegovina remains unpromising. Waiting times for asylum decisions currently stand at around ten months, four months longer than what the UNHCR recommends. The outcome of this decision, if not denied, would likely be a second-rate ‘subsidiary protection status’; the de facto outcome for all people on the move claiming asylum from countries including Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This status prevents access to family reunification, naturalisation and guarantees only a one-year residency permit, thus providing no stability to build a life in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

With little hope of being granted refugee status in Bosnia-Herzegovina, people on the move will inevitably keep moving forwards and attempting the dangerous crossing of the Croatian border to make their claims in the European Union. Reports of pushbacks at this border however are perpetual. Bosnia-Herzegovina, whilst denying the opportunity for people on the move to put down roots within the country, continues to collaborate with Croatia in illegal pushback practices, placing many people on the move in a state of limbo and entrapment within the country.

In testimonies given to Collective Aid in Sarajevo, people on the move have recalled pushbacks from Croatian police in which they have been taken to official Bosnia-Herzegovina border crossings and handed over to Bosnian border police. Once in the custody of Bosnian authorities, people on the move have then reported being relocated to the Temporary Reception Centres in Sarajevo; a five hour drive or three to four-day walk back to the northern border with Croatia.

These accounts are supported by documents shown to Collective Aid, which people on the move were reportedly forced to sign whilst in Croatian detention facilities, confirming that the signatory will be “forcibly removed to Bosnia Herzegovina”. This is part of a bilateral agreement between the two countries, but nevertheless the practice remains illegal.

Document given to a person on the move in Croatia before a pushback (translated).

Pushbacks at the Croatian border

To further explain, a pushback occurs when people on the move, who have entered a country’s territory, are forcefully returned back across the border, denying them the possibility to claim asylum. This practice is largely documented as being enacted by police, coastguards, and border forces. These pushbacks, particularly at Croatia’s Bosnia-Herzegovina border, are often reported as being of a physically violent and degrading nature. It is important to note that pushbacks are illegal; violating multiple articles of international law, including from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At Bosnia-Herzegovina’s border with Croatia, we have heard horrifying testimonies regarding pushbacks reportedly from Croatian police in which people on the move have been forced to enter the deadly rivers at the border, sometimes at gunpoint. Theft of personal belongings is also common, with the theft specifically of mobile phones not only acting to prevent onward movement but also removing the possibility for people on the move to collect evidence, such as GPS locations and photographs, of these illegal encounters. Other pushback accounts regularly detail beatings with batons and degrading treatment such as strip searches in remote forests. This inhumane treatment of people on the move during pushbacks from Croatia is well-documented.

These border policies, instead of deterring migration, push people into taking longer, more remote and evidently fatal routes to reach their chosen destination and avoid detection from authorities. Lana, Mustafa and Ammar are among thousands of people who continue to lose their lives and go missing whilst crossing borders.

Strategies of non-arrival

Unique to the Balkans route, people on the move through Bosnia-Herzegovina are not only faced with the possibility of drowning, but also risk fatal encounters with wild boars,bears and unexploded landmines leftover from the war. Their “irregular” routes make them vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking and kidnappings for ransom. Long journeys across the remote terrain of Bosnia-Herzegovina also means that some people on the move suffer from health complications, such as heat stroke, hypothermia and dehydration.

These risks are a direct result of a lack of legal routes in which to claim asylum, and are exacerbated by the increased militarisation and surveillance of borders. Australian criminologists, Sharon Pickering and Leanne Weber, refer to this phenomena as ‘strategies of non-arrival’ - the ways in which border regimes operate in order to prevent people on the move arriving on their territory.

Dr. Estela Schindel expands on this to reveal how these strategies work to abandon and expose people on the move “to the elements”. Essentially, by pushing people on the move to take these longer journeys, border policies directly increase people's exposure to the environment and increase the likelihood that they will die due to environmental factors, such as hypothermia or drowning in the Drina River. In fact, the majority of deaths at borders are recorded as being “due to increased exposure to environmental conditions”.

By outsourcing these border controls to nature, the deaths they cause are not immediately attributed to the border agencies but are seen as natural and blameless.

Deaths and disappearances in the Balkans

Deaths and disappearances of people on the move in border zones are neither natural nor blameless, yet they continue unabated across the entire Balkans route. Globally, in 2023 alone, at least 8,565 people on the move died on migration routes. These numbers account solely for those confirmed dead, with many bodies that have drowned in rivers or died in remote wilderness areas never to be found. As of September 26th, the International Office for Migration’s (IOM) ‘Missing Migrant Project’ has recorded 394 people on the move as missing along the Western Balkans migration route.

Photograph taken by Collective Aid at the Cemetery in Loznica, Serbia.

For those whose bodies are recovered, they are often buried in cemeteries near the borders. Loznica, Serbia is home to one such cemetery and is filled with headstones marked ‘HH’, the Serbian short form for ‘Ho Hejm’ meaning ‘no name’. Unlike Mustafa and Ammar, who were buried at a cemetery in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina following their deaths in August, many of those whose bodies are recovered lack formal identification and therefore their headstones bear no name. Along the Bosnia-Herzegovina border in Serbia, 56 such graves can be located just between the towns of Bratunac and Bijeljina.

These cemeteries stand as a stark reminder of the inhumane reality faced by people on the move; that they must risk their lives in order to cross borders and seek the safety and asylum that should be guaranteed to them under international law.

Call for safe, legal and accessible routes

It is clear that Europe’s strategies of deterrence and criminalisation of people on the move does not work; people on the move will take all actions necessary, even risking their lives, in the hope of securing a better life for themselves and their families. As the Somali-British poet Warsan Shire famously wrote, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”. Europe’s de facto border policies cruelly abandon both people on the move and the international legal commitments that are supposed to serve and protect them.

If people on the move had access to reliable, safe and legal routes for emigrating and claiming asylum in Europe, the fatal routes they currently must take would become unnecessary and inactive. Collective Aid joins calls for safe, legal and accessible routes in order to reduce the preventable deaths of people like Lana, Mustafa and Abdulwahed at European borders.

Words by Rebecca Macivor

The inhumane borders of the Balkans Route: Bosnia-Herzegovina