Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia - Summary 3/7

A knowledge-mapping report

Release 3: The role of Intergovernmental Organisations in handling, reporting, and obscuring the deaths of people on the move across Serbia 

Tuesday 24 June 2025

Introduction:

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. Our aim is to contribute capacity, coordination, visibility, and documentation to efforts already underway.

Following Thursday’s release, the second of six sections we’re sharing ahead of publication of the full report in July, this third summary section focuses on the role of Intergovernmental Organisations in handling, reporting, and at times even obscuring the deaths of people on the move across Serbia.

The role of Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs)

The International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Missing Migrants Project (MMP) is the most widely recognised global record of deaths and disappearances of people on the move. Through this initiative, IOM has positioned itself as a leading authority on border deaths. It has been argued that the project, in particular, has reinforced IOM’s status as the principal intergovernmental actor in migration and border management, lending the organisation political legitimacy.

However, MMP significantly understates the deaths of people on the move in the Western Balkans. Between 2014-2025 MMP has identified 404 deaths, compared to 757 identified by 4D in the same period. It is important to reiterate that the numbers presented by 4D are the most accurate statistics available publicly - although the actual number is inevitably higher. 

For years, IOM has directly provided or facilitated the procurement of various border infrastructures and ‘border management’ equipment for Serbian authorities. This has included surveillance drones, thermal imaging cameras, and specialised vehicles, as well as playing a role in facilitating information exchange between states—for example, between Serbian authorities, the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and the UK.

Technologies provided or facilitated by IOM have reportedly been used to support pushbacks at various borders along the Western Balkan route. Pushback practices by Serbian authorities are well documented to create life-threatening conditions. At least one death at the Serbian border has been directly attributed to such a practice. Beyond direct facilitation, surveillance technologies—such as biometric data collection and situational awareness systems—serve as deterrent mechanisms to irregular crossings. These tools, alongside physical pushbacks, function as the EU’s de facto deterrence strategy. 

Serbia’s northern border with Hungary is heavily militarised, with multiple layers of razor-wire fencing, surveillance cameras, regular patrols, and reported nighttime UAV monitoring. By contrast, Serbia’s western border with Bosnia is minimally developed but geographically hazardous. 4D data shows it to be the deadliest of Serbia’s borders. Increasingly, people are choosing routes towards Bosnia over Hungary, correlating with the intensification of security infrastructure and surveillance along the northern border. The material support provided by IOM to Serbian border authorities contributes to this shift, pushing people onto more dangerous paths.

In addition to IOM, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Caritas, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are the main intergovernmental organisations actively and openly engaging on migration issues in Serbia. We contacted each of these organisations to request information that could support this research. Although several expressed moral support and interest in the topic, all indicated they had no information to share and referred us to the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and Migration (SCRM).

In at least two documented cases, Caritas and the ICRC were involved in coordinating burial procedures for people on the move. UNHCR supports all SCRM-run facilities and, as a result, shares responsibility for at least two deaths that occurred due to SCRM negligence.

The ICRC manages Trace the Face, a project aimed at reconnecting families with people who have gone missing along migration routes. The programme allows families to submit profiles and photographs of missing individuals, which are then circulated across national and international Red Cross networks, in accordance with data protection policies. As an organisation, we are frequently contacted by people searching for relatives lost in Serbia, raising questions about how effectively Trace the Face functions in this context. Despite its global scope and the ICRC’s resources, the programme has produced negligible tangible outcomes in Serbia. While it has not yet led to the identification of a death in the country, it remains active and could potentially serve this purpose in future..

Currently, most of ICRC’s activities in Serbia focus on integration and social support. Since the peak of arrivals in 2017, the number of registered people on the move has declined. Consequently, national and international actors have shifted their focus away from humanitarian assistance and towards integration programmes. As a result, migration in Serbia is no longer considered a ‘crisis’.

With the exception of Caritas, the intergovernmental organisations mentioned are primarily funded by national governments. These same states are also funding border regimes that contribute to, and bear responsibility for, border deaths in Serbia. Given their resources and institutional legitimacy, intergovernmental organisations are among the best-placed actors to engage meaningfully with this issue. For instance, a small fraction of the funding used by IOM to equip Serbia’s border forces could be redirected to ensure dignified treatment for the dead—through the provision of proper headstones, support for repatriation costs, and the maintenance of burial sites for both identified and unidentified individuals.

The reasons for intergovernmental organisations’ limited engagement with this issue remain unclear. One explanation may lie in the nature of their agreements with Serbian state authorities. The Red Cross, for instance, confirmed involvement in death and burial procedures in Bulgaria, but not in Serbia, where SCRM maintains exclusive authority. According to the Red Cross, SCRM oversees all such procedures involving refugees and migrants. Non-governmental and intergovernmental organisations, therefore, have no direct role in managing these cases, instead engaging only tangentially—often through ad hoc activities within SCRM facilities. ICRC, for example, has largely redirected its focus to reintegration work and hosts occasional programming inside SCRM centres. As we understand it, data on border deaths in Serbia is held exclusively by SCRM in a centralised and opaque database. This unregulated system of migration management is specific to Serbia’s non-EU status. Despite these limitations, intergovernmental organisations remain among the most capable stakeholders to respond—and their ongoing inaction deserves critical attention.

The fourth summary section of this report, which details the role of activists in monitoring, reporting, and filling gaps in official processes and procedures for handling the deaths of people on the move across Serbia, will be published on Thursday 26 June.