Ocalenie Foundation, together with partner organizations - Sienos Grupė from Lithuania, Gribu palīdzēt bēgļiem (I Want to Help Refugees) from Latvia, and Human Constanta from Belarus - is publishing a report on the death toll at the European Union border with Belarus.
During the event the authors of the report will present the results of their research work, and after the presentation we invite you to a panel discussion and Q&A with expert speakers.
From the beginning of the humanitarian crisis in August 2021 to the end of March 2024, the deaths of 116 people at the border in four countries (Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) have been documented, and migrants themselves have reported at least 26 more deaths to activists in their testimonies. The deaths of migrants at the Union's borders illustrate the tension between declared European democratic values and their practice by member states.
Countries on the eastern border of the European Union have adopted a pushback policy toward migrants familiar from other European borders: the Mediterranean, the Balkans, etc. However, the natural conditions on each of these borders are different, and governments use the landscape as a weapon in different ways.
During the panel discussion, together with expert speakers, we will consider how the crises of migration policies on the borders of the European Union differ, and what they have in common. How does the humanitarian crisis on Europe's eastern border fit into the overall policies on the EU's external borders? How are narratives of irregular migration constructed in individual EU border countries? How does local civil society respond to these crises?
