Erased in life and death: intersecting injustices faced by people on the move in Serbia: Report summary 1/7
A knowledge-mapping report
Release 1: Summary of findings and death realities
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.
Below, to coincide with the start of Refugee Week 2025, 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.
Summary of findings
Border deaths in Serbia are underreported, many people’s deaths have and will go off any official or unofficial record
People attempting to seek sanctuary by transiting through or seeking asylum in Serbia have died and continue to die for a range of reasons. All deaths are either directly or indirectly products of a violent border regime
Burial sites for people on the move are found across Serbia, with most concentrated near exit points of EU-bound migration routes
There is no publicly accessible official/centralised data on burial sites for people on the move in Serbia
Purpose and scope of report
This report attempts to map existing knowledge and identify gaps on the topic of border deaths and related procedures in Serbia. It also seeks to shed light upon the roles various stakeholders play in relation to this topic. A key objective is to map and centralise data on the known locations of named and unnamed burial sites.
Context and urgency
Despite hosting large public facing projects that engage with dead and missing people on the move, intergovernmental organisations generally do not engage with the topic in a meaningful way in Serbia - in some cases, their limited involvement may perpetuate procedural gaps. In the absence of meaningful engagement from intergovernmental organisations and state authorities, and amid ongoing procedural shortcomings, gaps are often filled by grassroots actors; motivated individuals or activist groups. In other instances,responsibilities may fall to municipal workers in border areas - whose only connection to the border regime is their geographic proximity.
Gaps in data and procedures
The Serbian commissariat for refugees and migration is reportedly in possession of centralised data on border deaths in Serbia (inside and outside of camps) although this data is withheld, and their procedures surrounding the handling of deaths are hidden. Ostensibly, official handling procedures from death to burial are identical in Serbia whether the person is documented or undocumented. Yet in reality, for people on the move, procedural steps are often missed or not adhered to. This can be for a multitude of reasons, many of which are systemic, including lack of resources, capacity, or prioritisation. Each known case differs significantly, with little consistency in procedures or outcomes. Outcomes are often shaped by who is involved at the time in each case, which results in myriad procedural challenges. These may be bureaucratic (identification, documentation ), cultural (e.g. religious traditions .)or material ( procuring, headstone maintenance). All of these issues, in various ways, contribute to a reduced sense of dignity for the deceased and their family.
Death realities
In practice, the management of death for persons on the move in Serbia diverges significantly from the formal procedures laid out in law:
Identification challenges
Most people on the move who die in Serbia lack verifiable identity documents. Individuals often either do not carry identification, carry false identification, or provide incorrect names upon registration at camps (to avoid being deported back to their home countries, for example), complicating post-mortem identification processes. As a result, morgue personnel are frequently left without reliable data to link the deceased to any formal record.Even if an individual is identified, in practice, many embassies - especially of countries experiencing political instability, conflict, or weak institutions - may be difficult to reach or be slow to respond. This may significantly delay the process.
Storage periods and embassy involvement
Because morgues are required to keep bodies for no longer than thirty days, the burial may proceed without embassy involvement if no response is received. However, whether morgues actually adhere to the legally mandated thirty-day storage period remains unclear. We are aware of at least one case whereby a person was buried without formal identification having taken place and before the 30-day threshold period was observed. Additionally, anecdotal evidence suggests that, in some cases, families abroad have resorted to paying bribes to morgue officials in order to facilitate the identification of deceased relatives. This raises serious concerns about both transparency and access to due process in death management systems.
Certification and misidentification
The issuance of death certificates is handled by the matičar (civil registrar). However, there have been repeated accounts of misidentification, including instances in which the wrong name is entered onto a death certificate. These errors may perhaps arise from inadequate identification mechanisms but are also attributed to negligence and administrative carelessness.
Burial procedures and religious needs
In cases where a body remains unidentified and no external individuals - such as family members or international organisations - come forward to fund a burial, the state assumes responsibility. These state-managed burials are typically carried out in the cheapest manner, involving the generic Christian wooden cross to mark the grave, despite most individuals probably having a Muslim origin. The use of the designation ‘N.N.’ (nomen nescio, or “no name”) is standard across all unidentified persons, regardless of origin or cause of death. This means that ‘N.N.’ of migrants are indistinguishable from the ‘N.N.’ graves of unidentified Serbian bodies. Unless there are many graves filling a particular burial plot, the year or date inscribed on the cross may be the only indicator by which to later locate or identify the individual.While the cost of burial is typically handled by local authorities who report a lack of state support, in practice, this responsibility is often distributed across a loose network of actors, including municipal governments, NGOs, religious charities, and at times sympathetic individuals or activists.
Grave maintenance and access
Serbian authorities are under no legal obligation to maintain graves unless the deceased is deemed to be of special historical or social significance. This has resulted in instances where ‘N.N.’ graves have deteriorated over time, with identifying information fading or disappearing altogether - adding additional complexity to the issue of unnamed graves. Furthermore, until today there is no publicly-available database which provides the locations of burial sites of migrants who have died within Serbia’s borders. On the other hand, it must be recognised that in most cases, border areas are in rural and isolated locations, not only geographically, but also in terms of socio-economic support from the central government. This results in a lack of adequate resources to actually comply with certain procedures.There is an additional layer of complexity introduced by religious and cultural considerations. Serbia’s ‘PUK’ state utility companies have their own funeral companies that carry out the majority of burials of people on the move, meaning that not only can they gain profit from these burials, but they effectively hold a monopoly on death procedures involving migrants. Serbia’s state funeral companies declined to respond to our request for clarification on these matters. As we understand, state-led burial procedures do not appropriately account for the correct cultural considerations for those who have died of Islamic faith - the majority of people on the move in Serbia. These considerations include burial sites oriented perpendicular to Mecca, the presence of an Imam during the burial, performance of the salat al janazah.
The Commissariat for Refugees and Migration in Serbia declined to provide information on death and burial procedures.
Local responses
In some areas, particularly in southern Serbia, Muslim communities and imams have stepped in to conduct religiously appropriate funerals for people on the move. These grassroots efforts underscore both the inadequacies of the official system and the solidarity shown by the local community in addressing this humanitarian issue.
The second summary section of this report, which details our efforts to map the deaths of people on the move across Serbia, will be published on Thursday 19 June.