The Polish authorities’ policy has led to more deaths in the Polish-Belarusian border area. Since the start of the humanitarian crisis in August 2021, there have been at least 60 confirmed deaths on both sides of the border. In addition, many families are reporting their loved ones missing to organisations and humanitarian workers operating in the border area. The scale of the disappearances remains unknown as there are no effective mechanisms to report these cases and families do not receive systematic support to locate and identify their loved ones.
Families searching for their missing relatives face numerous obstacles when trying to obtain information about their fate. As the families are usually located outside Poland, e.g. in a distant country of origin, they are often unable to take effective action to report the disappearance and initiate a search for their loved ones. Past experience has shown that the police authorities must receive a personal report of the disappearance of a missing person before they can initiate a search. An additional obstacle is the lack of trust in state institutions: travelling companions of missing persons are often reluctant to contact Polish services as they know that this could result in their immediate return to Belarus. The lack of information about available procedures in languages understood by those searching for their relatives is also a challenge.
As practise has shown, Polish legislation on tracing missing persons is not geared towards the specific challenges of disappearances at the border. This is particularly true in a situation where the actions of the Polish services contribute - directly and indirectly - to these disappearances, for example by failing to carry out administrative procedures in relation to persons crossing the border, identifying persons returned to Belarus (and registering their personal data) or granting them the right to inform a relative of their detention. According to the recently published General Comment of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, enforced disappearances resulting from such (in)activity can be considered “enforced” within the meaning of the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Unfortunately, as Poland has not ratified this instrument, the families of missing migrants cannot invoke individual complaint mechanisms.
To address these challenges, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights has launched the project Migrants Missing at Poland's Borders – Diagnosis of the Situation, Legal Analysis, Mechanisms for Action and Recommendations for Change. Project staff hold weekly on-call meetings where we help families file formal missing persons reports with the Itaka Foundation, the only non-governmental organisation in Poland that deals with the search for missing persons. As part of the established cooperation, the families of missing persons are also offered access to psychological support, legal advice and translation assistance. To find out more how to get help, follow this link.
As part of its activities, the HFHR checks the reports of missing persons that have so far been recorded and collected by informal associations and newly established aid organisations providing emergency humanitarian aid in the border region. One of the objectives of this project is to obtain and present reliable statistical data on the phenomenon of disappearances in the border region, to diagnose the obstacles faced by the families of missing persons and the factors contributing to the increasing number of disappearances, and then to develop recommendations necessary for the implementation of appropriate systemic solutions. As part of this ongoing project, we also conduct strategic litigation in selected cases of missing and deceased persons.
The disappearance of people in the Polish-Belarusian border region is a challenge that the new Polish government will face, regardless of who forms it. We therefore call for a dialogue between the government and the non-governmental organisations, which have so far been the only ones to address this issue. We maintain our view that with a functioning international protection system based on respect for the rights of migrants, disappearances should not occur. For this reason, we are taking part in the consultation of the new parliamentary team on migration policy and are presenting our recommendations. You can watch a webcast of the last meeting, including the HFHR recommendations presented by Marta Górczynska, our Migration Unit Coordinator, here.
Recognising that the disappearance of migrants at the borders is a topic that requires addressing at the international level, including the EU level, we, as the HFHR, cooperate with NGOs working also at other borders of the European Union. In October, during the ODIHR Warsaw Human Dimension Conference, the HFHR organised an event on enforced disappearances at the EU-Belarusian border. The event was attended by civil society representatives from Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland who spoke about the impact of the humanitarian crisis at the EU borders.
To find out more, we invite you to listen to our next podcast in the Migrations.Info series, which looks at the issue of enforced disappearances from the perspective of international law and the current situation in Poland.
