In Five Months, Serbia Approves Only One Asylum Request

Migrants

From January through May 2025, Serbia granted asylum only once, in the form of subsidiary protection to a Burundi national, the national Asylum Protection Center announced on June 20, on occasion of World Refugee Day.

The Center’s director, Rados Djurovic, told BETA that in the first five months of this year 189 people expressed the desire to seek asylum in Serbia, while 59 submitted an actual application. Of the latter, only the subsidiary protection request made by a person from Burundi was approved.

In Djurovic’s opinion, these figures point to the difficulty of obtaining asylum in Serbia, where refugees cannot be certain that their petition will be reviewed or processed quickly and efficiently.

“Their position regarding the asylum-seeking process is difficult. Refugees alone can do nothing to ensure their appeals for asylum are reviewed or to ensure that the process is expedited and efficient. None of that is possible without professional legal aid, which is free but hard to come by,” Djurovic explained.

According to his organization’s records, most asylum-seekers come from Egypt, Afghanistan, Syria, Russia, Palestine, Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan, while the majority of transit refugees are from Afghanistan, Syria and Turkey, followed by North Africa and Pakistan. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has led to about 21,000 Ukrainians staying in Serbia, along with 45,973 people from the Russian Federation.