Throughout the 1st six months of 2025, the Independent Monitoring Mechanism (IMM) conducted a total of 25 monitoring missions and 100 monitoring operations. IMM’s monitors visited 74 monitoring locations, including 21 green border monitorings throughout Croatia, whereby all on-the-spot checks were unannounced, meaning that the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) was not given prior notice about the dates or locations of IMM’s missions or operations. IMM’s monitors thus conducted 26 interviews with migrants about their experiences stemming from interactions with police officers of the MoI. Compared to IMM’s field operations during the previous period of 18 months since IMM’s establishment at the beginning of June 2021 and until January 2025, while accounting for the difference in the length of the two periods, this is an 150% increase of IMM’s monitoring activities and field presence.
Although the IMM publishes its monitoring findings about actions of police officers of the MoI in the area of border protection, illegal migration and international protection, with special emphasis on the respect of fundamental rights, the principle of non-refoulement, the prohibition of collective expulsion, the prohibition of torture or other forms of ill-treatment, in its annual report, IMM’s Coordination Board as of 2025 regularly provides the MoI with IMM monitors’ recommendations following each of their monitoring missions and thus notifies the competent state authorities about detected irregularities and/or fundamental rights violations. This provides the MoI with the opportunity for a timely implementation of IMM monitors’ recommendations, outside the scope of annual reporting cycles, while the referral of detected irregularities and/or fundamental rights violations to the competent state authorities enables expedient investigations into alleged irregularities and/or fundamental rights violations.
Photo: IMM 2025
