When institutions debate asylum, borders, displacement and externalisation, the voices of people themselves are too often absent and the narrative is therefore overwhelmingly dehumanising. Our goal is to change that. That systems change must start with clearly presented evidence of people’s experience.
Our proximity, and the testimonies people entrust to us, allows us to bring credible, verifiable, field-level evidence of what is happening right now to institutions prepared to listen.
Recent activity list
Across multiple submissions, Collective Aid’s field documentation has been cited as key evidence for pushback violence, incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances and enforced disappearance risk, gender-based violence and harms, racialised abuse and degrading treatment.
Torture Prevention and Accountability
‘Unveiling the Torture Report’ Webinar (July 2024)
A public human rights webinar presenting regional findings and torture documentation from the Western Balkans, Greece, and Bulgaria. The briefing detailed evidence of systematic cross-border violence, torture, and ill-treatment occurring along migratory routes.
Joint Submission to the UN Human Rights Council UPR Bosnia and Herzegovina (48th Session, February 2025)
A joint report co-authored with the Global Detention Project (GDP) and the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) for Bosnia and Herzegovina's Universal Periodic Review. The report evaluated immigration detention conditions, border violence, and general human rights compliance. Following the review, our team participated in a June 2025 UN follow-up visit to brief human rights defenders on key findings and recommendations.
Report to the UN Committee Against Torture Serbia (81st Session, October 2024)
A co-submitted CAT report assessing Serbia’s compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture. The report focused on torture prevention, documenting unlawful detention practices, and highlighting systemic border pushbacks.
Disappearances and Incommunicado Detention
Joint Submission to UN WGEID Bulgaria (136th Session, April 2025)
A joint analysis with BVMN provided to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances concerning missing migrants in Bulgaria. The submission documented pushback practices, confiscation and destruction of mobile phones, life-threatening winter conditions, and secret detention affecting an estimated 1,135 people without individual protection assessments. This led WGEID to issue its first Balkan General Allegation, officially recognizing pushback practices as a driver of enforced disappearances.
Evidence Cited in UN ICCPR Review Greece (142nd Session, 2024)
Direct testimony collected by Collective Aid documenting migrant rights abuses and excessive pushback violence along the Evros River, which was formally cited during the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights review of Greece.
Input to UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief Death and Honouring the Deceased (October 2025)
A joint submission with BVMN examining state restrictions on the right to honor deceased migrants. The input highlighted barriers to cemetery access and improper burial practices in Serbia, and was directly incorporated into the UN Special Rapporteur's official thematic report.
Joint Briefing to OHCHR on Policy Barriers to Missing Persons (March 2026)
A joint briefing with BVMN submitted to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The report outlined structural and policy limitations that cause migrants to go missing and actively hinder authorities and families from ascertaining their fate and whereabouts.
Joint Submission to UN WGEID Croatia (August 2026)
A joint submission with BVMN detailing enforced disappearances, missing migrants, and border pushback patterns in Croatia. Building on the Bulgarian precedent, the report outlines obstacles to tracking individuals and includes a request for a direct briefing during WGEID’s 140th session.
Externalisation and Border Violence
Submission to CERD & CMD on Xenophobia and Migrant Rights (March 2024)
A submission drawing on testimonies gathered by Collective Aid to highlight xenophobic violence, systemic racial discrimination, humiliation, and degrading treatment inflicted on individuals during border pushbacks in Hungary.
Joint Submission to UN Special Rapporteur on Migrants Externalisation Report (June 2025)
A detailed report submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants examining migration externalisation policies in Bulgaria, presenting documented cases of prolonged unlawful confinement and incommunicado detention involving 27 individuals.
Joint Submission on Women, Girls and Enforced Disappearances CED General Comment No. 02 (July 2025)
A report examining the specific challenges faced by women on the move and detailing the criminalisation of community members who attempt to assist in identifying deceased migrants in Serbia.
Joint Submission to UN CERD Serbia (117th Session, April 2026)
A joint submission with GDP investigating discriminatory treatment, pushback practices, and the immigration detention of children in Serbia. These documented patterns were directly reflected in CERD’s official Concluding Observations.
Joint Evidence to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Serbia (June 2026)
Follow-up evidence submitted with BVMN documenting informal detention locations (including Subotica, Kanjiža, and Belgrade), racially motivated excessive force at borders, and the imperative to end child detention. The Committee integrated these points into its recommendations, creating valuable leverage ahead of Special Rapporteur Gehad Madi’s report at HRC63.
CERD Follow-up Submission Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 2026)
A follow-up submission evaluating Bosnia and Herzegovina's implementation of paragraph 32 of CERD's Concluding Observations regarding border violence, discriminatory practices, and non-refoulement mechanisms ahead of the Committee's 118th Session.
Diplomatic Engagement and Embassy Advocacy
UN General Assembly Side Event: “Leadership & Courage in International Affairs”
High-level diplomatic advocacy where Collective Aid’s Head of Organisation spoke at an official UN General Assembly side event, addressing human rights leadership, civil society resilience, and ecosystem responses to political pressure.
Briefings to EU and British Diplomats on Proposed Return Hub Legislation (2025)
A series of human rights briefings delivered to British and EU diplomats throughout 2025, addressing detention monitoring, reception center conditions, and serious human rights risks linked to proposed return hub legislation.
Briefings to Geneva-Based Diplomats
Targeted diplomatic engagement with Geneva-based diplomats, leveraging field documentation to highlight systemic border violations and advocate for the establishment of independent border monitoring mechanisms.
Why we engage with international institutions
Most human rights violations at borders take place in grey zones: remote areas, informal detention spaces, unmonitored routes, or under conditions designed to avoid documentation. States often get to deny wrongdoing, restrict access to observers, or simply hide behind jurisdictional loopholes. Our goal is to act as the counterbalance, bringing evidence, detail, and human stories that people give us permission to share. Issuing recommendations, questioning governments and developing policy documentation in these avenues is one way we can help shape the agenda, to ensure proximity becomes accountability.
To ensure negotiations are correctly informed.
Our teams document what is happening in Serbia, BiH, Bulgaria, Greece, and along the migration routes of the Western Balkans. Through testimonies, monitoring, and verification, we collect the detail that negotiations tend to overlook, and we take it to key policy forums.
To speak directly about people’s experiences.
We work with partners including the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), Global Detention Project, and others to ensure the experiences of people on the move get to shape international reviews, investigative inquiries, and key policy briefings.
To focus on the issues people care about.
Deaths and disappearances. Detention. Torture. Returns. Incommunicado detention. Racist violence. These are not abstract policy areas, they are the patterns people report to us, and the harms they ask us to expose.
How we engage with international institutions
Independent evidence, especially when it’s unfiltered, speaks for itself. In the past two years, our field documentation has shaped how the international community understands pushbacks, detention, disappearances, and deaths across several European border contexts. In all of the spaces we take our reports, diplomats repeatedly tell us the same thing: without strong and direct evidence, state narratives cannot be challenged. This is the gap we work to fill in our consistent engagements.
Submissions to UN treaty bodies and procedures.
With partners at the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), we co-submit reports to UN committees reviewing state compliance with international law. These submissions bring testimonies, data, and patterns of abuse into formal human rights review processes.
Direct briefings to embassies and diplomats.
We provide diplomats with accurate, field-verified insights that cut through sanitised official narratives or state censorship. This includes bilateral briefings, attending roundtables, and requesting thematic sessions on border violence, deaths, returns, enforced disappearances, civil society and civil liberties.
Public events and international panels.
When invited, we also speak at UN side events, webinars, and expert discussions, seeking to bring border realities into public discussions and global conversations that are dominated by jargon, euphemism and procedural language.
How you can support
Our engagement with institutions is resource-intensive and it requires a great deal of infrastructure including trained team members, good reporting, legal advice, and the capacity to verify and analyse large amounts of evidence. If you want accountability to continue, we need your help.
1. Share
Visibility shifts the cost of inaction and builds pressure. When evidence spreads, excuses break down.
2. Support
Monthly donation keeps our advocacy independent, free from pressures and able to speak clearly when others don’t.
3. Research
We collaborate with legal experts, researchers, academics, and NGOs interested in advancing border justice.