Belgrade, September 25, 2012 – The Regional Centre for Minorities strongly condemns the worrying situation outside of the Centre for Asylum Seekers in Bogovađa, which our activists visited on the 12th of September. Between eighty and a hundred asylum seekers are staying outside, as the centre has reached its maximum capacity of 150 people.

The basic human rights of the people outside of the centre are endangered – they do not have a roof over their head, access to water, basic sanitation and adequate nutrition. In other words, both their life and their right to a dignified life are endangered.

With this treatment of asylum seekers, the Serbian state is breaking its own laws, as well as international standards, which state that everyone who seeks asylum should be accommodated, and their basic needs provided for, within 72 hours, and until the final decision on their asylum claim has been reached.

The Centre for Asylum Seekers in Bogovađa is, besides the centre in Banja Koviljača, the only centre of this kind in Serbia. Asylum seekers were first accommodated there in June 2011. After racist mobilisations in Banja Koviljača in October 2011, many asylum seekers were relocated to Bogovađa and the centre soon exceeded, its capacity. Thus in July 2012, 229 were accommodated in the centre.

As the number of asylum seekers in Serbia keeps rising, the existing centres are too small to accommodate everybody. However, the Commissariat for Refugees of Republic of Serbia (KIRS), responsible for the accommodation of asylum seekers, has not been opening new centres. Besides, the Centre in Bogovađa reduced the number of people it accommodates to the official maximum capacity of 150 people. The reason for this could be that the costs of accommodating one person for one night is 8 euros, according to the words of a representative of KIRS.

The asylum system in Serbia has serious shortcomings. Since 2008, when the independent asylum system started in Serbia, nobody has been granted refugee status. This means that Serbia is effectively not a country in which migrants could permanently regularise their status, through claiming asylum. However, many undocumented migrants in Serbia seek asylum, because this is the only way for them to gain a temporary legal status and have at least temporary access to basic rights, such as a roof over their head and health-care. It is thus disgraceful to see that, even after they have claimed asylum, migrants are not accommodated in the centers and need to continue to sleep outside.

The Regional Centre for Minorities demands that the authorities find a solution for accommodating the asylum seekers, who are now staying without a shelter in front of the centre in Bogovađa as soon as possible, especially as the weather conditions are becoming more and more difficult and could gravely exacerbate an already worrying situation. We also believe that it is urgent to end the human rights violations and to ensure the compliance with the standards, which represent the minimum of the state’s obligations towards these people — and include providing them with the means necessary for their survival.