The article examines what happens when the systems intended to identify, record and protect people who die or disappear along the Balkan route break down, including the deterioration of grave markers, fragmented records, inaccessible procedures and the lack of pathways for families searching for missing relatives. What happens after, and who remains responsible when the procedure is over?
Read MoreThis article explores the barriers families face after a loved one is identified, from the costs and bureaucracy of repatriation to accessing dignified, religiously appropriate burials and maintaining traceable graves. While those without resources risk being buried unidentified or becoming impossible to locate, how are families and small community organisations are left to fill gaps in public systems?
Read MoreThis article explores how identification is most of the times not the standard, and how the system is build around making it difficult for families to reach their loved ones who have died on their journeys to safety. This piece ask the central question: If a person is identified, what happens after? And what follows if identification is not possible?
Read MoreA self-advocacy workshop in Lesvos organised by MSF and Collective Aid highlighted how people on the move can identify the challenges they face, articulate their aspirations and advocate for changes in areas such as protection, employment, housing and integration. Meaningful participation requires organisations to go beyond listening by sharing power, adapting their approaches and ensuring that people’s priorities influence advocacy and institutional action, while retaining responsibility for challenging the systems that affect their lives.
Read MoreThe piece explores how unidentified bodies pass between institutions, with no one taking full responsibility for their dignity or proper care. It focuses on what happens before identification, showing how procedures, gaps in the law, and local practices determine whether a person’s identity is discovered or lost. This introduces the central question: What happens after death, and what happens if a name is never found?
Read MoreCollective Aid’s Summer 2026 needs assessment highlights the ongoing challenges faced by people on the move in Lesvos, including urgent needs for clothing, shoes, hygiene items, food, adequate accommodation, education and psychosocial support. The findings provide practical recommendations for strengthening Collective Aid’s services, feedback mechanisms and advocacy to better respond to changing needs on the island.
Read MoreCollective Aid’s field assessment of Kosovo examines how reception, detention and return systems shape the experiences of people on the move. While conditions at the Vranidoll reception centre were generally described positively, the assessment highlights concerns around the 15-day reception limit, detention following onward movement or border crossings, violence and pushbacks, gaps in monitoring, and the growing role of Kosovo in the externalisation of migration control. The report also identifies significant gaps in understanding movement outside formal reception structures and calls attention to the protection risks created when access to asylum, freedom of movement and return are increasingly intertwined.
Read MoreOn 2 July 2026, Collective Aid joined the Impact Cities webinar, "Local Challenges Ahead: Municipalities and Civil Society in the CEAS Implementation," to discuss the early impacts of the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum, highlighting the monitoring challenges, increased pressure on municipalities, and growing risks to fundamental rights as implementation begins.
Read MoreOne month ago, Collective Aid hosted the webinar "Immigration Detention: From Global Trends to Bosnia and Herzegovina," bringing together researchers, advocates, and people with lived experience to discuss the realities of immigration detention, present findings from the Lukavica Detention Centre report, and place Bosnia and Herzegovina's detention practices within broader global trends.
Read MoreRead MoreThe first weeks of implementing the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum in Greece have been marked by administrative delays, stalled registration procedures, and reduced access to legal safeguards and essential services for asylum seekers. On Lesvos, these failures have left many people confined to reception centres without documentation, reinforcing existing patterns of containment and raising serious concerns about the protection of fundamental rights.
The report, Outsourcing Violence: The UK’s Border Externalisation Plan in the the Balkans, argues that UK externalisation is a three-stage process: a domestic asylum system that produces refusal without removal, a growing transnational architecture of security cooperation and return-hub planning, and the landing of those policies in the Balkans, where they would deepen existing detention, precarity, and abuse. It shows that externalisation is not a technical fix to migration management but a way of relocating the harms of a broken system, turning domestic dysfunction into outsourced violence and weaker accountability.
Read MoreThe report, Outsourcing Violence: The UK’s Border Externalisation Plan in the the Balkans, argues that UK externalisation is a three-stage process: a domestic asylum system that produces refusal without removal, a growing transnational architecture of security cooperation and return-hub planning, and the landing of those policies in the Balkans, where they would deepen existing detention, precarity, and abuse. It shows that externalisation is not a technical fix to migration management but a way of relocating the harms of a broken system, turning domestic dysfunction into outsourced violence and weaker accountability.
Read MoreThis article forms part of a blog series exploring what the implementation of the EU Migration Pact is likely to mean in practice, drawing on the realities we observe in the countries where we work. The series examines how policies associated with EU migration externalisation are already shaping migration governance and border management beyond the EU's borders.
In this part, we reflect on the Migration Pact, the broader externalisation agenda, and how these dynamics are playing out in Serbia.
Read MoreThis article forms part of a blog series exploring what the implementation of the EU Migration Pact is likely to mean in practice, drawing on the realities we observe in the countries where we work. The series examines how policies associated with EU migration externalisation are already shaping migration governance and border management beyond the EU's borders.
In this part, we reflect on the Migration Pact, the broader externalisation agenda, and how it plays out in Bulgaria.
Read MoreThis article forms part of a blog series exploring what the implementation of the EU Migration Pact is likely to mean in practice, drawing on the realities we observe in the countries where we work. The series examines how policies associated with EU migration externalisation are already shaping migration governance and border management beyond the EU's borders.
In this part, we reflect on the Migration Pact, the broader externalisation agenda, and how civil society was left out of forming the Pact in Greece and Bulgaria.
Read MoreThis article forms part of a blog series exploring what the implementation of the EU Migration Pact is likely to mean in practice, drawing on the realities we observe in the countries where we work. The series examines how policies associated with EU migration externalisation are already shaping migration governance and border management beyond the EU's borders.
In this part, we reflect on the Migration Pact, the broader externalisation agenda, and how these dynamics are playing out in Greece.
Read MoreThis article forms part of a blog series exploring what the implementation of the EU Migration Pact is likely to mean in practice, drawing on the realities we observe in the countries where we work. The series examines how policies associated with EU migration externalisation are already shaping migration governance and border management beyond the EU's borders.
In this part, we reflect on the Migration Pact, the broader externalisation agenda, and how these dynamics are playing out in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Read MoreThe report, Outsourcing Violence: The UK’s Border Externalisation Plan in the Balkans, argues that UK externalisation is a three-stage process: a domestic asylum system that produces refusal without removal, a growing transnational architecture of security cooperation and return-hub planning, and the landing of those policies in the Balkans, where they would deepen existing detention, precarity, and abuse. It shows that externalisation is not a technical fix to migration management but a way of relocating the harms of a broken system, turning domestic dysfunction into outsourced violence and weaker accountability.
Read MoreThis blog post spotlights Bosnia's Lukavica Detention Center, the country's sole immigration facility, where 4,631 people, including 115 children, were held from 2018-2024 amid EU-backed expansions and lax oversight. It contrasts official claims of safeguards with detainee testimonies of degrading conditions, arbitrary detention, and rights violations like denied medical care and Ombudsman access blocks.
Read MoreThis blog post spotlights Bosnia's Lukavica Detention Center, the country's sole immigration facility, where 4,631 people, including 115 children, were held from 2018-2024 amid EU-backed expansions and lax oversight. It contrasts official claims of safeguards with detainee testimonies of degrading conditions, arbitrary detention, and rights violations like denied medical care and Ombudsman access blocks.
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