Routes of Solidarity (Webinar)

On the occasion of the newly published study The Dark Sides of Europeanisation. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EUropean Border Regime, RLS SEE and RLS Athens have organized an interactive webinar Routes of Solidarity. The EUropean border regime, the Balkans & connecting resistances on Monday, 22 June 2020. The questions and discussion were related on how EU border and migration policies and the accession process of EU neighbors such as Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, but also the current COVID-19 pandemic, impact the situation of people on the move in camps in Greece and along the Balkan route. But above all, this event provides a space for the practitioners from different Balkan countries to explore the state of solidarity networks and mobility struggles along the Balkan route and discuss how they can be connected and strengthened.



Speakers: Nidžara Ahmetašević, BiH, Andrej Kurnik, Slovenia, Eleni Takou, Human Right 360, Greece, Amandine Bach, European United Left / Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), Barbara Beznec, Slovenia, Efi Latsoudi Pikpa Lesvos Solidarity, Greece, Natasha Dailiani Legal Center Lesvos, Greece, Natassa Strachini Refugee Support Aegean (Chios island), Greece, Antonia Pindulić, Center of Peace Studies, Croatia, Marta Stojić Mitrović, Serbia, Nikola Kovačević, A11, Serbia, Barbara Beznec, Slovenia, Miha Turk, Info Kolpa, Slovenia, Marta Stojić Mitrović, Serbia, and moderators: Vladan Jeremić and Maria Oshana, RLS.

While the external borders of the European Union have been increasingly militarized and sealed since 2016, some countries in the Balkans, among them Serbia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, have become the main transit countries in Southeast Europe, with clandestine migration often back and forth and people on the move exposed to brutal pushbacks at the EU borders. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the introduction of a state of emergency in the Balkan countries has led to an additional deterioration in the already deplorable human rights situation of people on the move. This is particularly the case in the camps in Greece where migrants are heavily exposed to the risk of infection. Moreover, illegal pushbacks are increasingly practiced at the EU borders as well as from places within countries, as reports from Croatia and Greece are proving.