Using family separation as deterrent – new report documents alarming illegal push-back methods

The newly released report, which is based on testimonies collected between April and June 2021, speaks of a wide presence of rights violations accompanying pushbacks experienced by asylum seekers and migrants irrespective of their age, gender, vulnerability or legal status. The report is the second of its kind, and also this time it documents physical beatings, abusive and degrading treatment, and destruction of property. However, in some EU Member States, the report also reveals cases of forceful family separations, which indicate a re-emerging trend in deterrence practices.

“It is hard to imagine the nightmare these families are going through! Having already endured an often difficult and dangerous journey, only to experience all parents’ worst fear – to be separated from your children without any means to contact them. And this as the result of actions by authorities in the countries you are trying to reach for protection,” says Secretary General of DRC, Charlotte Slente.

The report, which is published in partnership of DRC and six civil society organisations across six countries, includes incidents involving 3,403 persons – an increase compared to the first quarter of the year with higher numbers of pushbacks recorded at the Croatia-Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Hungary-Serbia borders.

The report documents continued widespread use of illegal pushbacks, including chain pushbacks as those documented in the previous report, from EU Member States (MS) and neighbouring countries.

“The numbers alone are outrageous, but behind the statistics are real children, women and men, who experienced danger, fear, perilous journeys and multiple rights abuses, from humiliating and degrading treatment, to being deprived of their belongings or exposed to physical and psychological abuse,” says Charlotte Slente: “And often, these people have had not one, but multiple such experiences, at the same or different borders.”

Despite calls for effective monitoring mechanisms of border practices and investigations of complaints related to pushbacks, the report shows that this is still lacking.

This affects asylum seekers’ rights to an effective remedy and states’ path to accountability.

“The rights abuses and undignified treatment of very vulnerable people, which we continue to see in several countries are very worrying and we hope to see immediate action by governments of countries accused of conducting illegal pushbacks by migrants,” says Charlotte Slente.

Find the report here: Doors Wide Shut.