60
Bujanovac and Sombor), while opening of a few more has been announced. The commissariat
made visible efforts to provide adequate conditions for the accommodation of migrants in all
the centres, to provide meals, conditions for maintaining the hygiene, health care, clothes and
shoes and satisfying of other elementary needs.
As a part of its monitoring of the treatment of migrants by the competent authorities, the
NPM also visited the improvised camps and other informal gathering places of migrants.
The conditions for their stay on these locations are unacceptable, they are hazardous for
their health and provide no possibility for them to maintain hygiene. The majority of them
haven’t been registered. In addition, such situations is hazardous for the public health and
safety of the parts of residential areas where these camps are located, in addition to not being
acceptable for the stay of minors who were spotted during the visits. At the repeated visits
of the camps along the border near Horgoš and Kelebija, it was noticed that the number of
migrants decreased. The improvised gathering places of migrants being outside the institutions of the system were particularly bad in the abandoned warehouse close to the Belgrade
bus station.102 Following its visits to the park of Luka Ćelović (next to the Faculty of Economics
of the University of Belgrade) and the Sveti Nikola square (a park near the bus arrival plateau
of the Belgrade bus station), the NPM took the position that the measures should be taken
to include the migrants in the institutions of the system. The Commissariat for Refugees and
Migration notified the NPM that the officers of the Commissariat intensified their activities on
providing the information and advising the migrants about the possibilities of their accommodation in the Asylum Centre in Krnjača and that in cooperation with the local self-government, the regular transportation has been organized to Krnjača (4 busses a day).
After the Balkan route closure, the migrants were no longer issued the confirmations of
their entry to the territory of Serbia for foreign nationals arriving from the countries where
their lives were threatened, based on the Decision of the Government on issuing the
confirmations,103 considering that with such confirmation, they were able to stay in Serbia for
72 hours form the time of its issue. The consequence of stopping with the practise to issue the
confirmations was that a significant number of migrants who entered the country, who did
not express the wish to seek for an asylum, was not recorded by the Ministry of Interior, but
only by the Commissariat for Refugees and Migrations at the moment of their accommodation in the Centres. Keeping of records by the Commissariat involved the entry of personal
data of the migrants in the uniform electronic records. In the second half of the year, the Ministry of Interior announced the registration of all migrants staying in the centres, that involved
taking of their personal data and photographs and collecting finger prints of migrants above
14 years of age.
On the occasion of visiting the centres for accommodation of unaccompanied minors from
foreign countries, placed within the institution for education of children and youth in Niš
and Belgrade, the NPM reported that these institutions provide to unaccompanied minors
the services of stay, health care and meals, covering the costs of transportation and in
order to satisfy the needs of the minors coming from abroad and providing them the social
102 At the beginning of 2017, a large number of migrants was moved to the newly opened Reception Centre in
Obrenonvac.
103 “Official Gazette of RS”, no. 81 dated September 24, 2015.
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