Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
This is the first webinar of the webinar series “Resisting the normalization of Push-Backs”. We discussed different cases of litigation against documented Push-Backs around Europe and explored the strategic importance of documentation and legal mitigation for stopping these inhumane practices.
Does legal mitigation nowadays form an effective way of dealing with policies by the EU and its Member States infringing human rights of refugees
A discussion with Petra Leschatz (Push-Back Alarm Austria) , Gianfranco Schiavone (ASGI), Nikola Kovacevic (human rights lawyer, Serbia)
moderation: Monika Mokre (EIPCP)
About the speakers:
Nikola Kovačević is a human rights lawyer from Serbia. He won the 2021 Nansen Refugee Award for Europe for his contribution to the development of the Serbian asylum system (representing almost 30% of persons granted asylum in Serbia) and his work on documenting and legally challenging illegal border practices. Nikola has been a writer for AIDA since 2015 and involved in ELENA as a coordinator for Serbia since 2016. ELENA and AIDA both operate under the auspices of ECRE. He has almost ten years of experience in litigating asylum cases at the national and international level, including in cases that imply a need for cross-border cooperation with CSOs and individuals from Hungary, Croatia and Bulgaria. He has litigated cases of collective expulsions, the arbitrary deprivation of liberty at transit zones, the flawed application of the safe third-country concept and others. Nikola is also a teaching assistant at the Union University School of Law where he teaches criminal law while studying for his PhD.
https://www.rosalux.rs/en/documenting-human-rights-violation-serbian-croatian-border
Gianfranco Schiavone is the president of ICS (Italian Consortium of Solidarity), one of the associations that contributed to build the reception system for refugees in Italy and that has been operating in Trieste for 25 years. He is also a member of ASGI (association for juridical studies on immigration), of which he has been vice-president for a long time. ASGI is an association of legal scholars and lawyers that was founded 31 years ago ASGI . Together with ICS and other organisations, have created the network "Rivolti ai Balcani", which is a coordination that draws the attention of Italian society and politics to the very serious violations of migrants' rights along the Balkan route.
This is the first webinar of the webinar series “Resisting the normalization of Push-Backs”. We discussed different cases of litigation against documented Push-Backs around Europe and explored the strategic importance of documentation and legal mitigation for stopping these inhumane practices.
Does legal mitigation nowadays form an effective way of dealing with policies by the EU and its Member States infringing human rights of refugees
A discussion with Petra Leschatz (Push-Back Alarm Austria) , Gianfranco Schiavone (ASGI), Nikola Kovacevic (human rights lawyer, Serbia)
moderation: Monika Mokre (EIPCP)
About the speakers:
Nikola Kovačević is a human rights lawyer from Serbia. He won the 2021 Nansen Refugee Award for Europe for his contribution to the development of the Serbian asylum system (representing almost 30% of persons granted asylum in Serbia) and his work on documenting and legally challenging illegal border practices. Nikola has been a writer for AIDA since 2015 and involved in ELENA as a coordinator for Serbia since 2016. ELENA and AIDA both operate under the auspices of ECRE. He has almost ten years of experience in litigating asylum cases at the national and international level, including in cases that imply a need for cross-border cooperation with CSOs and individuals from Hungary, Croatia and Bulgaria. He has litigated cases of collective expulsions, the arbitrary deprivation of liberty at transit zones, the flawed application of the safe third-country concept and others. Nikola is also a teaching assistant at the Union University School of Law where he teaches criminal law while studying for his PhD.
https://www.rosalux.rs/en/documenting-human-rights-violation-serbian-croatian-border
Gianfranco Schiavone is the president of ICS (Italian Consortium of Solidarity), one of the associations that contributed to build the reception system for refugees in Italy and that has been operating in Trieste for 25 years. He is also a member of ASGI (association for juridical studies on immigration), of which he has been vice-president for a long time. ASGI is an association of legal scholars and lawyers that was founded 31 years ago ASGI . Together with ICS and other organisations, have created the network "Rivolti ai Balcani", which is a coordination that draws the attention of Italian society and politics to the very serious violations of migrants' rights along the Balkan route.
