Remembering Moria: Five Years On
Five years after the Moria fire, the scars remain. What happened on Lesvos in September 2020 was not an accident but the outcome of years of deliberate policies of containment, neglect, and deterrence. Instead of accountability for unsafe and degrading conditions, six Afghan youths - the “Moria 6” - were scapegoated in flawed trials, only cleared this May.
Today, the promise of “No more Morias” remains impossible. Closed, remote camps like Kara Tepe and the planned Vastria facility continue the same model of exclusion and control. Remembering Moria means rejecting these policies and calling for accountability.
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Mourning, Memory, and the Human Cost of Fortress Europe: Remembering the victims of 2024's Drina tragedy
Two years after the capsizing of a small boat on the Drina River, which claimed the lives of a young Syrian family and nine others, we remember the victims, recount the deadly conditions that force people onto perilous crossings, and call for collective mourning as well as recognition of the humanity that European borders continue to deny.
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Borders, Rhetoric, and Rights: Greece's newest frontier of control
Today the Migration Minister arrives on Lesvos, the latest in a series of visits to camps, detention facilities, and so-called ‘hotspot’ locations in recent weeks. During each of these visits, he has taken every opportunity to further entrench the deliberately provocative and dehumanising language, such as referring to people arriving in Greece as an “invasion”, which has already defined his tenure.
Ten years after the so-called Long Summer of Migration in 2015, Greece stands in a moment of further punitive regression, far away from a humanitarian approach to the issue. Rather than learning from the lessons of the past, the Greek government is seen once more to be escalating a strategy that is rooted in deterrence, exclusion and securitization.
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Closed and Controlled: Vastria and The Architecture of Containment in EU Migration Policy
If the EU knowingly finances facilities that isolate, endanger, and violate the rights of vulnerable people, can it claim to uphold human rights at all? It is clear that the CCAC system is not just a Greek issue, it is a European one. The funding, political support, and regulatory framing of these centres makes the European Union complicit in the conditions they produce. While leaders speak the language of humanitarianism and protection, their policies produce the opposite: trauma, neglect, and danger.
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No Rwanda, no problem: How the UK is outsourcing its deportation centres to the Balkans
Written for the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) and co-published with Collective Aid.
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Erased in Life and Death: Intersecting Injustices faced by People on the Move in Serbia: Summary 6/7
Following Tuesday’s release, this sixth and final summary section released before the final report publication on Thursday 10 July focuses on a number of locations case studies undertaken during this research and mapping project.
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In the Time of Almosts and Maybes
Reflections on Gaza, and what we tolerate
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Erased in Life and Death: Intersecting Injustices faced by People on the Move in Serbia: Summary 5/7
Following Friday’s release, the fourth of six sections we’re sharing ahead of publication of the full report in July, this fifth summary section focuses on the role of the border regime itself; not merely a backdrop but an active and structuring force. The border regime is simultaneously a causal factor, a web within which all of our context and discussion is enmeshed and from which it cannot be separated, and a central facilitator of EU policy and practice.
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Serbia's Expulsion Orders and Corruption: Bureaucratic Violence at Europe's Margins
In the family camp of Krnjača, on the outskirts of Belgrade, a young Moroccan man explains that he has received a Serbian expulsion order. Having arrived in the country several months ago, he recounts his arrest.
His story is not unique.
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Erased in Life and Death: Intersecting Injustices faced by People on the Move in Serbia - Summary 4/7
Following Tuesday’s release, the third of six sections we’re sharing ahead of publication of the full report in July, this fourth summary section focuses on the role of activists in documenting, reporting, and challenging official failures in the handling of deaths of people on the move across Serbia As they support families in the pursuit of justice and preserve the memory of those lost.
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Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia - Summary 3/7
Following Monday’s overview of our initial findings and the realities of death on the move in Serbia, we present the second of six sections to be released ahead of publication of the full report in July. This summary section focuses on our work to map the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
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Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia - Summary 2/7
Our full report ‘Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia’ explores the systemic neglect, institutional silence, and structural violence surrounding the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
Following Monday’s overview of our initial findings and the realities of death on the move in Serbia, we present the second of six sections to be released ahead of publication of the full report in July. This summary section focuses on our work to map the deaths of people on the move in Serbia.
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Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia: Report summary 1/7
Our full report ‘Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia’ explores the systemic neglect, institutional silence, and structural violence surrounding the deaths of people on the move in Serbia. It is not a new intervention, nor a pioneering effort. Rather, it builds on the longstanding work of civil society organisations, cemetery workers, communities of faith, journalists, researchers, and families who have long documented, buried, and remembered the dead. Below, the first of six sections to be released ahead of publication of the full report in July offers an overview of our initial findings and the realities of death on the move in Serbia.
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Formidable Trust: The plan for 2025
Frontline humanitarian services and rights-based advocacy across Europe are eroding in real time. The deeper crisis is not vanishing funding - it is the growing needs, isolated responses, and the breakdown of the civic scaffolding that has held this movement together until now. Our response is Strategic Mutualism.
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Lines that Hurt: A new monthly advocacy report
Today, Collective Aid publishes the first of our new monthly advocacy reports, sharing conversations with people on the move on the Balkan peninsula and Lesvos.
From violent pushbacks at the Bosnia-Herzegovina/Croatian border to another devastating shipwreck outside Lesvos, April’s conversations highlighted the all-too-familiar, but never less enraging pattern of systemic abuse and daily neglect. In Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, and Greece, people endure overcrowded camps, a lack of basic healthcare, and scant access to vital psychological support.
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‘Europe Day’ through a broken mirror: Fortress walls and institutional complicity
On May 9, the EU dresses itself in blue and gold, lighting up its monuments to celebrate a shared vision of unity, peace, and prosperity. Simultaneously, across the continent of Europe, fences are being fortified and policies tightened in order to deny these ideals to people on the move at its internal and external borders.
As the Union evolves, what is the price of solidarity which is solidified by the exclusion of the ‘others’ condemned to violence and death at its borders?
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Weaponised Migration: How People on the Move Become Pawns in State Diplomacy
The manipulation of migration as a geopolitical tool is not a new concept, but in recent years, states have increasingly exploited the vulnerability of displaced people to advance their political agendas. Migration should be about seeking safety and opportunity, but it has become a tool of coercive diplomacy and hybrid warfare, particularly at the EU's external border.
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Deportation Nation: The impact of Trump’s ‘America First’ policies on the lives of people on the move
Since his inauguration in January, President Trump has enforced deportation raids, sent US Marines to construct a ‘fortified’ border wall extension in San Diego, and terminated the existing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asylum scheduling system, cancelling all existing appointments, effectively making it impossible for people on the move to apply for asylum in the United States (US).
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A collective reflection on International Women's Day 2025 on the invisible weight of care work
This 8th of March, on International Women's Day, we would like to shed light on a central issue in the solidarity sector which is not talked about enough: the invisible weight of care work.
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