Sunday, 13 December 2015

Tabanovtse Transit Camp




Tabanovtse, on the northern border of Macedonia with Serbia, is one of several transit camps along the refugee route.
At the moment only refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are allowed to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia, where they wait at a transit camp called Gevgelija to catch a special government train across the country to Tabanovtse. Others are classed economic migrants and sent back to Athens.


At this camp refugees are offered food, clothes, clean toilets, children's play areas, free wifi and phone charging stations and family reunion advice. Several thousand refugees pass through here each day and, although there are tents where several hundred can sleep, most depart within a few minutes to walk the two kilometre path into Serbia where they are put on buses to Belgrade.
Overall it was an impressive operation run by the Macedonian government with support from UNHCR, the Macedonian Red Cross and smaller NGOs. The EU has provided significant funding.

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