Every Life is Valuable

On this year's World Refugee Day, June 20th, we celebrated the strength and courage of women and girls who had to leave their homes, fleeing wars, persecution, and the inability to exercise fundamental human rights and freedoms. They sought peace, freedom, and rights thousands of kilometres away from their homes, alone or with their children.

Each carries a unique courage and strength, which Atina’s advocacy group members, also women with refugee experiences, marked at the asylum and reception centres in Krnjača and Bujanovac.

June 20th is marked with over 117 million forcibly displaced people worldwide this year. In Serbia, the focus was on introducing the initiative to establish and mark this day, which is dedicated to all those with refugee experiences. During the workshops held, integration experiences in Serbia were exchanged, discussing the journey to achieving rights and how refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in Serbia would like those who help them and whose mandate is to protect especially vulnerable groups to treat them.

Messages were written for everyone marking this day, pondering what it means to be a refugee in 2024. The most vital message agreed upon unanimously to be sent to all refugees on June 20th was, "Every life is valuable."

Women in the asylum centres who attended the workshops expressed their need for peace, solidarity, access to education, medical care, and more cultural mediators. They need to recover and empower themselves for further struggles and life challenges. They wanted to tell everyone that they did not choose to be refugees; others forced them into this role, and they have learned to live with it.

Their greatest wish is to create a safer and better world for their children.

We will all work together to make this wish come true. We have heard their messages, have you?

Since 2016, the NGO Atina has regularly held workshops in asylum and reception centres to support girls and women from Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and various African and other countries in realising their rights. Atina’s program has introduced a specific gender perspective and feminist practice in response to migration issues. Over the past eight years, support has been provided to more than 10,000 women and children from refugee, migrant, and asylum-seeking populations in Serbia.