Internally Displaced People in Serbia:
People and Families that don’t Exist
Cacak, Serbia   September 2007

Conditions in refugee camps are extremely poor, and are only getting worse. The World Food Program has been withdrawn.1 The Red Cross no longer provides donations to refugees and the displaced. As the economic situations worsens generally, aid to refugees decreases. In the meantime, people remain trapped in refugee camps with no way out. Six or seven people sleep in one room, a space that must also function as a storage, cooking and living area. Children spend winters in tents and transport containers.

Shelter is the primary need for all refugees currently living in camps. They are hungry with little to eat, but they remain hopeful that if only they had better lodging, if they only weren’t living with six or seven family members in a room, that their lives would at least somewhat improve. Only those with absolutely nowhere else to go have remained in these camps.

Closure of Refugee Camps

Efforts are currently underway to empty and shut down the remaining refugee camps. But no one seems to know what happens to the people who are forced to leave. If you ask the Red Cross they will say, for example, that the people rented a small house nearby or something similar. But no one would spend eight years in a refugee camp unless they truly had no other options. The conditions in the camps are so bad that all those who had the opportunity to leave the camps for somewhere better already did so.

When a camp closes, the people living there are only given the option of moving to another camp. They rarely agree to move, and are left essentially homeless, despite constant talk of providing actual housing. The state continues to insist on a policy that displaced persons should return to Kosovo.

The majority of refugee camps are now closed. In and around Cacak there were eight centres a few years ago, but none remain. Even people with disabilities were forced to leave. When these centres close, the people living in them are basically forced out on to the street. For these reasons, few people leave even the informal refugee camps.

Aid and assistance cancelled

Refugee camps had been provided with food through state assistance. A hot meal was served once per day: half a kilogram of food along with some bread. But that aid was only provided to official refugee camps and to people who who were on the list kept by each camp. So those who arrived later and did not make it onto the list of official refugees could only stand by and watch as those around were fed while they received nothing. Now that assistance has been greatly reduced, and camp residents only receive half a kilo of cooked pasta or a bit of vegetables Ð not nearly enough food to actually live on. The Red Cross had also provided aid earlier, both food and hygiene assistance. But since 2004, all that has vanished, and now all that official refugee camps receive is funding for water and electricity costs; expenses kept low by the poor conditions in the camps, such as a single bathroom shared by many families.

The Red Cross no longer provides aid to refugees and since 2004, has returned to its regular operations in Serbia: providing first aid and collecting blood. The tiny amount of food now provided to refugees, perhaps half a loaf of bread and a can of food per person, is given to all, whether they are a newborn or an adult. Mothers say that they’ve never received fruit, vegetables, meat or milk for their children, that some children in the camps have not eaten fruit for years. On one occasion, we took some fruit to the Maricic camp (near Kraljevo) and people fought over it, hoping to be able to give some to their children. Faced with this desperation, a fair distribution was impossible.

Documents

Many people from Kosovo arrived here without identity papers either they were not registered as residents in Kosovo or in some cases they documents had been destroyed or lost. But in Serbia, not having an identity card means that you cannot apply for childrens benefits, social assistance or any other type of government program. Not that such assistance is particularly generous  for example, child benefits are only about 1000 dinars or 12-13 euros per month per child. But even getting that minimal assistance means providing about 15 or 16 documents which for refugees, may be extremely difficult or impossible to obtain. A large number of families, particularly Roma, simply give up on even trying to obtain assistance, knowing that it will be simply physically impossible to obtain the required documents.

For example, many Roma in Kosovo were never entered in the registry of births. As a result, they never had identity cards in Kosovo, and so they don’t have them in Serbia either. When they arrive, if they are settle in an informal refugee camp, such as Stari Batnjik (near Novi Pazar), rather than an oscial camp, they do not have a registered, declared address. Without such a registered address, they cannot get an identity card. And without the card, they cannot do anything, including applying for any sort of government assistance. But obtaining an identity card means traveling to one’s birthplace to two adult witnesses who can confrm their identity, a process entirely dependent on the goodwill of the local municipality and registrar. In practice, however, it is impossible to find a place where this process proceeds without problems. Some people are directed to the courts, but others, many people in fact, give up entirely.

There is no political will within the government to allow a simplified procedure for the provision of identity documents, and so whatever help becomes available simply bypasses those without papers. Officially, they simply do not exist. Their children cannot register for school. No assistance is available to them. They cannot apply for anything available to others. Even if, for example, an NGO were to say Look here, we are going to help refugees and displaced people, those without identity documents are not on the list of such people. They have no legitimate status as refugees or displaced persons. They have nothing. Simply put, they and their families do not exist. Nonetheless, if they wish to send their children to school and begin the process of getting documented, they find that it can take from six months to one year. This means that a child will likely not be able to register for school on time and given the lack of adult education in Serbia, this can mean a complete lack of access to education & absolute neglect on the part of the system.

Having an address is the main requirement for an identity card and without an address it is impossible to register as a resident or receive documents. In other countries, this requirement is met by allowing people to register through community centres or the Red Cross, so that one address covers hundreds of people, allowing them all to regularize their status.

Unemployment

Especially in the informal settlements, people primarily live off of collecting recyclable materials, panhandling/begging, and charity. Under the Gazela bridge in Belgrade you can find vast amounts of stacked paper for recycling. People truly work hard, but simply cannot find regular work without identity documents. Particularly if they don’t have a registered address in a particular city, they cannot seek work there. In other words, they are left to fend for themselves.

Exploitation

Dealers who venture under the Gazela bridge will pay three dinars for a kilogram of paper, but the recycling centre pays eight. The collectors themselves, however, simply lack the resources to deliver and sell the paper themselves. They have no choice but to keep selling to those who come to them.

Lack of Education

The agreement on readmission has created new problems in the area of education. There’s no provision, for example, for translating a child’s documents, and the state takes no responsibility for ensuring that children who attended schools abroad can have their documents notarized so that they can register for school in Serbia. If parents cannot afford to have a child’s school papers translated and notarized, their child cannot register for school. And children who do not immediately return to school often end up leaving the education system entirely. A large number of Roma children who previously attended school in, for example, Sweden, could not enroll in school upon returning and have simply stopped trying. Another problem is that children who were in school elsewhere are often held back a grade or two upon enrolling in school after their return. They then encounter problems due to age differences and difficulty adapting to the new school, sometimes resulting in their leaving school entirely.

A large portion of displaced and refugee children, especially those born in Western European countries, do not know the Serbian language, speaking Romani and/or the language of the country in which they were born instead. Although there are officially supposed to be Roma teachers assistants in Serbian schools, in practice, they are extremely rare, available only in the couple of schools with large numbers of Roma students. But when Roma children are deported and returned to Serbia to say, Cacak, they will find no such assistance.

Lack of health care

Health care which had been provided on the basis of refugee or displaced person status covered only the most basic services. Getting new prescription eyeglasses, for example, was viewed as a luxury. 

In today’s refugee camps, both official and informal, many children suffer from health problems, particularly asthma. Deported children who had had glasses or the like in Western Europe and themselves without health care, with no one to follow the growth and development.

It is extremely hard for people with health care needs who arrive at the Belgrade airport to find that quite simply, there is no one to care for them and that there is no structure in place to get them the support that they need.

Racism

Refugee camps are either Serb or Roma. Conditions in both are terrible, except that Roma are primarily found in informal camps, where the live in tents year-round, summer and winter, or in metal shipping containers measuring only 2.8x3m or 3x5m. An entire family will be relegated to one such container. In other Roma camps people live for years in nylon tents  women even give birth in the same tents they live in. This is a huge problem that few people turn their attention to.

Segregation and an unaware public

Camps in Serbia are deliberately situated so that they are out of the public eye. Quite simply, other people do not see them and so they go about their lives unaware of the existence of the camps or the living conditions within them. This situation is compounded by the fact that camps that arise in cities are cleared out. For example, the Stari Batnjik camp in the city of Novi Pazar has been moved more than once. When the camps and the people living in them are visible, others become aware of the problems and are able to take action. When those same people are swept out 11 km out of the city, they become invisible.

Getting information to refugees and displaced persons

Refugees and displaced persons with the right information can ask for assistance from organizations such as Praxis.2 But many others are unaware that any help is available to them. Another office offers assistance with readmission but only those already holding an identity card have access, so that undocumented persons remain without papers and without information about Serbian organizations

Some refugees have decided to return to Kosovo due to their homes being repaired. After a time, however, many return to Serbia for reasons of safety, education and/or unemployment. While many houses in Kosovo have undergone reconstruction, if people have nothing to live on, absolutely nothing in some cases, they have no option but to return to Serbia. But upon their return, they are no longer able to access formal refugee camps and are simply left to fend for themselves.

Absolute Indifference

When a Roma child dies in a refugee camp, all the documentation is completed in one day. Suddenly the child is entered in both the registry of births and registry of deaths all the bureaucracy overcome in one day. Otherwise, there is an overwhelming lack of will to do anything. There is no policy requiring that registrar employees treat everyone equally, no policy that registry bureaucracies be relaxed for refugees and displaced persons and no provision for easing receipt of child benefits or other social assistance. Moreover, any sort of dealing with the government in Serbia requires getting a copy of your birth certificate (proof of your entry in the registry of births), issued within six or even three months. Depending on the municipality, a birth certificate can cost between 100 and 300 dinars. Registered refugees and displaced persons are supposed to pay only 30% of the cost, but few, if any, municipal employees are aware of this policy and there is no system in place to enforce the rule or inform employees.

Jasa Tomic is a town in Vojvodina, in northern Serbia, which was ßooded for six months about two years ago. The residents were resettled in new houses. Nothing like this is ever done for refugees or displaced people  no one builds them houses in six months. The Stari Batnjik camps has waiting for two years for container shelters to arrive from Belgrade but so far only the ground and some concrete foundations have been prepared at the camps new location (located outside the city of Novi Pazar). There are no containers, no one knows when they will arrive, or in what shape they’ll be.

These people, according to the governments long term goals, are supposed to return to Kosovo, but no one seems concerned that they are never going back. Neither has the state thought to ask the refugees themselves what they would like to do. Those who cannot return to Kosovo or do not want to, are simply no one’s responsibility in Serbia. After they leave a refugee camp, the government considers its duty fulfilled: Look, they have been in a camp for eight years, we paid for their water and hydro.

There are numerous organizations in Serbia offering legal, social and psychological services to refugees and displaced persons. But no organization offers shelter and there is no institutional capacity to ensure that a sick person without papers has somewhere to go rather than being left to fend for him or herself. There has been talk of such a network for three years, connecting social services, schools, etc. but nothing has been done and there is no budget in place. People deported from Western European countries cannot go to refuges camps because the commissioner in charge of refugee has decreed that once they cross the border in Serbia they are no longer considered displaced. But they are displaced and cannot return to Kosovo, and with the official camps closed off to them, such people can be found living underneath the Gazela bridge or other informal camps, without papers and with no access to health or social services.

Differences in status between the internally displaced and refugees

Refugee status is held by those who fled Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia during the wars in the 1990s. Such refugees were given identity cards and if they resided in official refugee camps their residence was considered registered and declared. As a result, they had access to some social services, including basic health care, as discussed above.

The 280,000 people who fled from Kosovo in or after 1999 are considered internally displaced persons. Although they were also settled in the official refugee camps, the already poor conditions were exacerbated by the fact that previous refugees had already occupied many of the best shelters available, meaning that little space remained for this second wave of displaced persons. For example, a hospital building abandoned for ten years and falling into ruins was used to shelter some of the Kosovo refugees in appalling conditions.

Those who did not want to leave Kosovo but could not stay in their homes moved to larger enclaves such as Gracanica. As a result they are doubly internally displaced, unable to claim that status in Serbia and unable to return to their homes, despite remaining within Kosovo. They remain in limbo, waiting for better days for what is likely to be a very long wait.

(This text was adapted from an interview by Global Balkans with Marija Simovic, an activist with the Swedish Committee, an organization fighting for the rights of refugees from the former Yugoslavia seeking asylum in Sweden. The interview first ran (in Serbian) in issue 4 of Z Magazine and at www.freedomfight.net)

1 The World Food Program, based out of Rome, is an agency of the United Nations and distributes food and other basic goods to people suffering hunger as a result of natural disasters or famine. A large part of the programs mandate involves providing assistance to countries facing refugee crises and refugees themselves.

2 Praxis is a national non-governmental organization that was established in June 2004, as a continuation of the Norwegian Refugee Councils Civil Rights Project, which NRC conducted in Serbia from 1997. Praxis is aimed at providing legal protection to refugees and IDPs through free legal assistance, information and counseling, as well as through advocacy, promotion of civil society values and raising public awareness on problems faced by these population groups.

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