Since the start of 2018, around 2,500 refugees and migrants who tried to reach Western Europe through Croatia have been turned back, including 1,500 who have been denied asylum, while 700 have reported violence and theft, said UNHCR’s new Desperate Journeys report.

The latest report on the movements of refugees and migrants through Europe by the UN Refugee Agency, covering the period from January to August 2018, said that, among the 2,500 refugees and migrants who were turned back at Croatian borders, there were more than 100 children and more than 700 adults who complained of violence and theft.

Along with Croatia, the report on illegal migrants travelling from Greece and Bulgaria through the so-called Balkan route also included Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Hungary, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Refugees interviewed by the UNHCR and its partners in the Balkans reported of their smugglers denying them food in order to extort more money. Some refugees were robbed by local criminal groups along the way, and many women and girls, as well as some men and boys, claimed to have suffered sexual violence.

At least 26 people have died since the beginning of 2018 in 22 separate incidents while travelling across the Balkans. Out of the 22, 12 people drowned, mostly on the border between Croatia and Slovenia.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 150 people have complained about experiencing physical violence at the hands of Hungarian border authorities during forced deportations, while more than 140 have complained about similar treatment by the Romanian authorities.

Several hundred people claimed to have been pushed back from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Serbia and Montenegro, while at least 65 were forcibly relocated back to Serbia from neighbouring countries which they had entered for the first time, the report said.

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