During the first days of the refugee influx, as many as 65,000 refugees were trapped for days in the muddy "no-man's land" at Blace between the borders of Kosovo and Macedonia due to the excessively long time the Macedonian authorities were taking to process new arrivals. Refugees were held in appalling conditions with no shelter or assistance, and international humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR, were not given access to provide relief. Only one international agency, the International Medical Corps, was able to provide medical care.

On the nights of Monday April 5 and Tuesday April 6, the refugees in Blace were forcibly cleared by the Macedonian authorities. Refugees were taken to nearby NATO-run transit camps, at Brazda and Stenkovic, while others were transported by bus and plane to Albania, Greece and Turkey. They were given no information about where they were being taken, were not registered, and did not give their consent to be moved. In the ensuing chaos as refugees were herded onto buses and transported away, many people were separated from their families, including women, children, and elderly persons.

Human Rights Watch remains seriously concerned that over one week after refugees were moved from Blace, many -- including children, pregnant women, the elderly, the disabled, and other vulnerable groups-- continue to be separated from their family members, and have no information about their family's whereabouts. While efforts are being taken by some international agencies (ICRC, UNICEF, Save the Children Alliance, Care International) to try to re-unite children with their families, many still do not know where their family members are. Human Rights Watch is concerned that delays and confusion in the refugee registration process, which is now being coordinated by UNHCR; the closed nature of the refugee camps which prohibits refugees from traveling to other camps to find their family members or to be reunited with family members; and the lack of sufficient communication between camps, are all factors that hamper family reunification efforts in Macedonia. We are also very concerned about reunification with family members who were forcibly relocated to third countries such as Turkey, Albania, and Greece.

Finally, Human Rights Watch is concerned about access for refugees seeking entry to Macedonia. The whereabouts of refugees who had been waiting at the border to cross into Macedonia on Wednesday April 7 remains unknown. This group includes an estimated 70,000 people who had been waiting to cross at the Blace border crossing and an estimated 10,000 people who had been waiting at the Jazince border crossing. Human Rights Watch received extremely worrying reports that refugees may have been returned to their home areas in Kosovo by Serb police. Although some refugees are now entering Macedonia, Human Rights Watch is concerned at reports from refugees that the Serb border to Macedonia has been repeatedly closed and that fleeing refugees experience harassment and obstruction from Serb border police and military. Furthermore, some refugees report continuing delays and obstruction by the Macedonian police when entering Macedonia.

Recommendations
To the Macedonian Government

• Human Rights Watch urgently calls on the Macedonian government to keep its borders open and to uphold its obligations under international refugee law.
• We call on the Macedonian government to respect the fundamental human dignity of all refugees, and in particular to respect principles of family unity and freedom of movement.
• We urge the Macedonian government to make all necessary efforts to facilitate the reunification of refugees with family members, including allowing transfer of refugees between and from refugee camps and allowing refugees to travel to camps to search for missing relatives.
• Refugees should not be moved out of Macedonia against their will and families should not be separated in the process.
• We call on the government to allow UNHCR and relief agencies prompt and unhindered access to all refugees in order to provide urgently needed protection and assistance.
• We urge the Macedonian authorities to put in place fast and efficient arrival registration procedures and to enable refugees to move quickly to designated refugee reception sites.

To UNHCR

• We urge UNHCR, as the international agency with a mandate to protect refugees, to ensure that all refugees, inside and outside the camps, are registered to enable fast and efficient family reunification.
• We call on UNHCR to take all necessary steps to ensure that refugees can join missing family members. This includes facilitating movement of separated refugees between camps and outside camps and providing adequate communication.
• Priority should be given to reuniting groups with special needs, particularly children, pregnant women, the elderly and disabled.
• We call on UNHCR to establish a constant presence on the Macedonian border and in all refugee camps to monitor refugee protection, according to its mandate.
• We urge UNHCR to be an active advocate on behalf of refugees in Macedonia.

Registration
Human Rights Watch staff based in the region report that thousands of refugees have been stripped of all documentation and property while fleeing from their homes in Kosovo. The loss of documentation and property could pose long-term difficulties for refugees trying to assert proof of identity and place of origin.

Recommendations

• As a matter of priority Human Rights Watch calls on UNHCR and the international community to establish comprehensive registration programmes for Kosovar refugees.
• Under its mandate on statelessness and nationality, UNHCR should give immediate attention to the question of registration and documentation for refugees, to avoid the potential of future statelessness.
• Refugees must be registered on arrival in host countries and provided with some identification as proof of identity and origin (this could be a refugee card, wrist bracelet or indelible ink, as used in other large-scale refugee emergencies).
• In the longer-term, the refugees must be interviewed and a full record taken, including details of identity, place of origin, and property.
• Lack of documentation or proof of identity and origin should not be an obstacle to enabling refugees to exercise their right to return to their homes.

Protection of Refugee Women and Children
The majority of refugees arriving in neighboring countries are women and children. Human Rights Watch is very concerned about the protection of these groups. There are unconfirmed reports that some refugee women may have been subjected to rape and sexual violence in Kosovo. Human Rights Watch is also concerned for the security of refugee women and children, particularly in the border areas of Albania and Macedonia.

Recommendations

• Reports of rape and sexual violence in Kosovo and in refugee settlements should be investigated and survivors of rape and sexual violence should be provided with appropriate medical and psycho-social assistance.
• Human Rights Watch calls on UNHCR as a matter of priority to address the protection needs of women and children.
• The UNHCR guidelines on the protection of refugee women and children must be immediately implemented.
• Female protection officers should be sent to the region and the protection needs of women should be reflected in the physical lay-out of refugee camps and settlements.
• Reproductive health services should be established as a matter of urgency.
• UNHCR should, as a matter of priority, address the needs of unaccompanied minors.
• All efforts should be taken to reunite children with family members, and tracing programmes should be put in place.

Location and Civilian Nature of Refugee Camps
Human Rights Watch is concerned that international standards are respected in the establishment of refugee camps and settlements.

Recommendations

• Camps should be established at a safe distance from the borders with Kosovo to avoid cross-border attacks or military incursions.
• The civilian and humanitarian nature of refugee camps must be observed.

Evacuations to third countries
Neighboring countries, particularly Macedonia, have asserted the considerable economic and political strain caused by the influx of refugees from Kosovo. In response, several states, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Norway, Poland, Turkey, and the U.S., have offered to provide Kosovar refugees with "temporary refuge," in order to relieve some of the pressure on Macedonia and to ease delays at the Macedonian border. All of the above countries are asserting that this is a temporary, exceptional measure (to save the lives of those currently trapped at the border to Macedonia). The stated objective of all countries is that refugees should be held until such time as it is safe for them to return to their homes in Kosovo, although there is obviously no indication of how long this will be.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the legal status of evacuated refugees is unclear under the current proposals. It is not clear whether evacuated refugees will be provided full refugee protection in third countries, nor what long-term options are available to them. We are also concerned that some of the refugees may be held in conditions amounting to arbitrary detention.

Moreover, we are extremely concerned at confirmed reports that on the nights of Monday 5 and Tuesday, April 6, thousands of people were forcibly removed from Macedonia and transported by bus and plane to Turkey, Greece, and Albania. Refugees were given no information about where they were being taken or what was happening to them. Many of them did not want to leave and tried to resist removal. UNHCR and IOM officials were not informed about these evacuations and were not present. The refugees were not registered prior to departure and UNHCR was given no information about who was on the planes. Family members were separated from one another during the evacuation, and few steps appear to have been taken to facilitate family reunification.

While subsequent departures to third countries appear to have been voluntary and refugees have been properly registered prior to departure, Human Rights Watch remains seriously concerned that refugees are not given adequate or timely information about where they are going or their legal status. Those refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch who were waiting to depart to Germany, for example, had no information about where in Germany they were being taken. Nor did they have any information about where they would stay, what their legal status would be, or whether they would be allowed to join family members already in Germany. Interviews with German officials currently in Macedonia confirmed that it was their policy not to tell refugees in advance where they were going or about their future status. In most cases refugees were told the city they were traveling to as they boarded the planes, and were briefed about their legal status, rights and obligations once they arrived in Germany. There was some confusion, even amongst the officials, about whether refugees would be allowed to join family members in Germany.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that the speed in which relocations are taking place risks continuing separation of families. Some families, desperate to leave, are registering for relocation even before they have been reunited with all their family members. Human Rights Watch has received reports from concerned international agencies that some families have been relocated while they are still searching for missing family members. This clearly violates the principle of family unity and the UNHCR guidelines on "humanitarian evacuation."

Recommendations

• The fundamental human dignity and human rights of all refugees must be respected at all stages of evacuation. No refugee should be moved against his/ her will. Refugees should not be ill-treated during evacuation procedures. UNHCR and IOM observers must be present at all evacuations to ensure that departure is voluntary and that family unity is respected.
• Evacuations should be carried out according to the latest "UNHCR Guidelines on Humanitarian Evacuations of Refugees from FYROM [Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia]."
• Every effort should be made to maintain family unity. Efforts should also be made to keep communities together. Only reunited families should be evacuated. In the event that separation occurs before or during evacuation, all efforts must be made to reunite families as soon as possible. (Priority should be given to vulnerable groups, such as children and the elderly, in reunification efforts.)
• Refugees must be given full, objective information about where they are going, their legal status, and the conditions under which they will live. Refugees should be properly registered and provided with documentation both prior to departure and on arrival.
• Evacuated refugees must not be held in a state of legal limbo. Human Rights Watch believes that all those fleeing Kosovo have a valid fear of persecution and should be considered as bona fide refugees under international refugee law and accorded all rights thereby due to them. In the event that states extend some form of temporary protection, the full rights of the refugees must still be protected, particularly against refoulement. Temporary protection should not be used as a lesser status, or as a substitute for full refugee protection.
• Refugees should not be treated like detainees. Human Rights Watch has been concerned by reports that the United States might confine 20,000 refugees in the tightly-controlled, fenced-in military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and welcomes the U.S. government's decision not to transfer refugees to the Guantanamo facility at this time. Conditions there in the past have not been in compliance with the U.S.'s obligations under international refugee law, and the fact that it is an offshore military base has deprived refugees and asylum seekers of the legal standing to protect their rights under domestic law and frustrated their access to NGOs and legal advisers. Rather than being held in these substandard conditions, these refugees should be admitted into the territory of the United States and given the full benefits to which they are entitled under both U.S. and international law.
• Appropriate services and facilities must be provided for the care of refugees. Full medical care must be provided. Special attention should also be paid to the psycho-social needs of refugees bearing in mind the horrors they have witnessed inside Kosovo, their difficult journey to Macedonia and Albania, and the potential trauma and culture-shock of long-distance relocations. In the longer-term, the educational needs of children and adolescents must be addressed. As women and children make up a large proportion of the refugee populations, special attention should be paid to their protection and assistance needs.
• Refugees should not be held incommunicado. Refugees should be able to communicate regularly, and free of charge, with close family members or relatives. Refugees should also be provided with regular, reliable information about the situation in the Kosovo region.
• UNHCR protection officers must be present in all refugee reception sites. UNHCR personnel should ensure that the refugees are given full refugee protection under the 1951 Convention.
• NGOs, independent human rights monitors, immigration attorneys, and the media must have free access to refugee reception sites to monitor conditions.
• Long-term solutions to the plight of refugees must be sought. The rights of refugees to return to their homes must be upheld. All efforts should be taken to secure the safe return of refugees with full human rights guarantees. Any refugee who is unwilling to return to Kosovo should have the right to an individual assessment of his or her claim. Any refugee found to have a valid fear of persecution if returned, or able to invoke compelling reasons arising out of previous persecution for refusing to return to Kosovo, should be allowed to remain in the host country. Refugees should be provided with appropriate legal assistance and information. UNHCR protection officers and immigration attorneys should be given access to interviews to ensure that assessments are conducted in a fair and open manner, according to international refugee law.
• Other long-term options, including third country resettlement for refugees with particular protection needs, should also be explored.
• The international community should continue to explore a variety of ways in which to share responsibility for the Kosovo refugee crisis.
• It must provide financial aid and humanitarian and logistical assistance to neighboring refugee-hosting countries, as well as extend full refugee protection to asylum seekers from Kosovo.

Deportation of Kosovo Albanians and other Yugoslav Citizens Abroad
Human Rights Watch is extremely concerned at reports that some states are continuing with plans to deport Kosovar Albanians in the midst of the on-going conflict.

Recommendations

• Human Rights Watch calls on all states to halt deportations of Kosovar Albanians until such time as their safety and human rights can be guaranteed in Kosovo.
• Draft-eligible Yugoslav citizens should not be deported given widespread reporting that the military campaign in Kosovo involves a systematic policy of commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. While avoiding national military service is not normally grounds for claiming refugee status, it is increasingly recognized that where service involves participation or complicity in serious international crimes, asylum is justified.