On 10 April 2024, the European Parliament adopted the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, a package of reforms expanding the criminalisation and digital surveillance of migrants. Despite civil society organisations’ repeated warnings, the Pact “will normalise the arbitrary use of immigration detention, including for children and families, increase racial profiling, use ‘crisis’ procedures to enable pushbacks, and return individuals to so called ‘safe third countries’ where they are at risk of violence, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment”.
Dear colleagues, the Centre for Peace Studies office will be closed from April 1st to April 7th, and during this period, free legal assistance will not be available.
The rule of law in the EU continued to deteriorate in 2023, as governments further weakened legal and democratic checks and balances, according to the newly published Liberties Rule of Law Report 2024.
In light of the impending expiration of temporary protection on 4 March 2025, we, alongside 130 civil society organizations, urgently appeal to the European Union for the development and implementation of coordinated, comprehensive, and sustainable solutions to ensure the continued safety, rights, and inclusion of millions of displaced Ukrainians in Europe.
Platform 112, an association of 60 civil society organisations, on Thursday described as a "blitzkrieg against media pluralism" the proposal by the parliamentary committee on information, computerisation and the media that the parliament replace Croatian Radio and Television (HRT) director-general Goran Radman and appoint HRT editor Sinisa Kovacic as acting HRT director-general.
Motivated by the announcements made by the press that the Government of the Republic of Croatia will soon start the amendment procedure of the Law on State Border control, Centre for Peace, Non-Violence and Human Rights Osijek, Centre for Peace Studies, Welcome! Initiative, Miramida Centar and Regional Address for Non-Violent Action are wondering: Who is attacking us? Who are we defending ourselves from? Are we in war? Refugees are in search for safety, and it is our moral duty, as well responsibility deriving from the international humanitarian law, to do all we can in the sphere of humanitarian care.
Despite various attempts, the memory of persons who helped and rescued endangered persons “from the other side” during the breakup wars of Yugoslavia is rarely publicly acknowledged. There is, nevertheless, one exception: the case of Srđan Aleksić, a young Bosnian Serb who was killed while saving a Muslim acquaintance in Trebinje in January 1993.
With regards to today’s meeting of the Chiefs of Police of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia, who are in Zagreb discussing the humanitarian crisis, the Welcome! Initiative calls for these countries not to reach for measures of returning the refugees back to insecurity, by uplifting the internal border controls and playing ping- pong with human destinies. Countries whose representatives met today have the moral and political responsibility towards refugees knocking on our doors.
With regards to announcement by the Minister of Internal Affairs Vlaho Orepić, introducing a new regime of transporting refugees by rail directly from Macedonia to Austria, the Welcome! Initiative reminds of the necessity to introduce secure and protected air, land and sea corridors for refugees wishing to reach their desired destinations, in order to reduce the violations of their human rights, as well as number of deaths occurring daily within the EU borders.
