Asylum Denied

Previously averaging a few dozen refugees per year, Lithuania has taken in over 4100 asylum seekers in the summer of 2021. All of them crossed over from Belarus in what's been called by the Lithuanian government as an act of hybrid war orchestrated by Alexander Lukashenko. The sudden influx of migrants has put the country’s security and humanitarian systems to the test as well as raised tensions in the society, eventually leading to the implementation of push-back policy and the building of a 4-meter-tall and 679-km-long border fence with Belarus. More than 10000 migrants have been pushed back to Belarus since early August 2021, and the ones who managed to get in are still stuck in refugee detentions centres around Lithuania facing a faulty immigration system and an uncertain future.