On the 3rd of September, it will have been exactly 10 years ago that refugees and migrants started the March of Hope in Budapest. Thousands of people who were blocked at the Keleti train station in Budapest by the Hungarian authorities decided to enact their right to move by walking to the highway toward Austria. On the 4th of September, their successful mobilisation meant that they could even travel by bus to the Austrian border and from there with trains onward, throughout Europe. For several months, corridors from Greece to Sweden were opened, allowing for free movement and even a choice of where to settle. At that time, the Dublin system collapsed, and with it, the need for smuggling. It was a period of time when the lowest death rate at EU borders was recorded.
The summer of the unexpected…
Nobody had anticipated the Summer of Migration. Neither politicians, border guards, and the so-called risk analyses of Frontex, nor solidarity movements expected the scale and dynamism of movements. Later, we would understand some of the factors that had come together, aiding the Summer of Migration: the longer-term consequences of the Syrian war, which had led to mass displacements in the region, the often inhumane conditions in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, coupled with the hopelessness of returning to Syria. Changes in government in Greece, where the new Syriza government decreased restrictions and eventually allowed migrant movements through the country. There were many more factors, but what was decisive, first and foremost, was the determination of the people on the move.
Between May and August 2015, they opened the borders to Macedonia by sheer force of numbers and travelled further to Serbia and Hungary, receiving solidarity from local NGOs and civil society groups along the way. After several attempts by different state authorities to divert the people on the move and keep them detained in camps, the self-organised March of Hope created its own dynamic. The borders were literally overrun in the following weeks and months of autumn 2015. Governments in the Balkans desperately created improvised border crossings and strange corridors in order to not lose complete control. At the same time, welcoming groups formed, mainly local supporters but also international supporters, and joined along the routes building amazing solidarity structures, offering food, clothes, and information to people on the move.
The backlash and the brutalization of borders
Both the militarization of the fence at the Greek-Macedonian border, with thousands of refugees and migrants blocked in the fields of the Greek village of Idomeni, and the EU-Turkey deal of March 2016 marked the beginning of the backlash. In the following years, and continuing up until today, conditions along all migration routes would gradually worsen, characterized by a brutalization of the border regime. Non-assistance and death at sea, illegal and violent push- and pullbacks on land and at sea borders are daily realities which have become “normalised” practices of human rights violations by border guards and Frontex throughoutEU. More and more agreements and “memoranda of understanding” between the EU and North African governments have been concluded, which include funding and training border guards and the transfer of surveillance technologies. Detention, forced labour, chain deportations, torture, rape, slavery, and pogroms are the consequences. Deterrence, no matter the human cost, is the motto of EU migration policy and the externalisation of borders to North Africa and beyond.
The tenacity of struggles for the right to move
Still, despite this backlash, struggles for the right to move, for protection, and for a better life continue everywhere along the different migration routes to cities in Europe. People on the move change or invent new routes to undermine or circumvent blocked ones. The risk of death is a permanent companion. Suffering, violence, and trauma are the price of these daily struggles and confrontations. From such contested spaces, manifold solidarity projects have evolved, not only to document and protest human rights violations, but also to build and to extend infrastructure for freedom of movement like the provision of food and shelter, support with information guides or hotlines, or legal interventions and civil rescue ships.
The Chain of Actions
In light of all this, we call for a transnational Chain of Actions in September and October 2025. A transnational online press conference will take place on the 4th of September, the day of the historic breakthrough of the ‘March of Hope’ in Budapest in 2015. We will connect different locations and mobilizations in a common chain of events.
We invite everyone to join and mobilize for these actions and also call for further, small- and large-scale initiatives and events during these weeks in September and October.
Together, we live today in a society of the many. This is a legacy of 2015 on which we want to build. Freedom of movement is a possibility. We saw it ten years ago and we see it every day in the cracks of Europe’s borders! Solidarity still exists and can be the basis for a beautiful society in which all can live, freely and equally!
Coalition for Free Movement
Contact – chain-of-action@tsc25.net
Website – https://trans-border.net/index.php/chain-of-action-2025
Caldendar
4th to 7th of September 2025 in Biesenthal near Berlin
Reflect. Resist. Reclaim the Future.
A camp for people organized in Search and Rescue, flight, no-borders, decolonization & migration, as well as everyone connected to these struggles.
We invite people with experiences of displacement, activists, and allies to share experiences, reflect on our political strategies, learn from each other, and shape the next chapter in this movement.
For ten years, we’ve been fighting for civilian sea rescue, freedom of movement, and fundamental rights for all.
This anniversary is rooted in the broader struggle that emerged powerfully during the Summer of Migration – standing in solidarity with people on the move, resisting the deadly fortress Europe, and fighting for a future without borders, but with justice and solidarity…
Website – https://sar-camp.wtf/
Between 10th and 20th of September around Lampedusa
f.LOTTA – A massive occupation of the central Med
f.LOTTA has two main objectives. The first one, linked to the space it occupies, the central Mediterranean Sea, aims for immediate change. The other is to project a radical political horizon, to push the realm of possibilities and alternatives.
In the central Mediterranean Sea, Fortress Europe has successfully managed to discipline rescue associations into a tight operational framework and to normalize the presence of preventable deaths. Day in and day out, rescue associations live under the constant scrutiny of an authority that, instead of supporting their rescue efforts, blackmails them with faraway ports of disembarkation, fines, detentions, and more. The efforts of Fortress Europe to remove from the central Med witnesses and rescue assets have been coupled with filling the sea with Libyan militias chasing people on the move. f.LOTTA occupies this space, re-politicising the central Med and – through its own presence – contends the narrative and practices of Fortress Europe….
Website – https://flotta.noblogs.org/
12th and 13th of September 2025 in Geneva
Join the protests at the headquarters of these institutions of human rights violations in Geneva
UNHCR = UNFAIR
On Friday, the 12th of September 2025, Refugees in Libya will hold a press conference in front of the headquarters of UNHCR, presenting the “Book of Shame“. It includes dozens of complaints and accusations from refugees and migrants in Libya, Tunisia, and Niger. They all experienced non-assistance and ignorance, negligence, and rejection from an institution that pretends humanity is central to its cause. Instead of fulfilling its mandate to protect refugees, asylum seekers, and people on the move, the UNHCR is protecting European borders and has become an instrument of European externalisation policies. Within the last 18 months, through a new hotline project, Refugees in Libya and the supporting alliance have collected hundreds of testimonies from those who have witnessed continuous human rights violations. UNHCR did not care about it and was unreachable for these people.
IOM = NASTY
In Libya we have known their concept of blackmailing for many years. People are detained and kept in unbearable situations, while the “International Organisation for Migration“ (IOM) presents them with only one option: to return to their country of origin.. In Tunisia, we recently experienced this system of blackmail again: in parallel to brutal attacks, raids, and evictions of makeshift settlements, IOM staff appear to desperate people on the move to advertise “voluntary return“. All over the world, IOM executes its “migration management“ with so-called voluntary return programs as an integral part of inhuman border regimes.
On the 13th of September 2025, we will demonstrate in front of the IOM and UNHCR headquarters to denounce their respective abusive practices. We will confront their humanitarian facade with the realities and the truth by numerous voices of testimonies, by recordings and direct speeches by refugee activists, who reached Europe and are not willing to forget neither their hurt nor their comrades, who still suffer and struggle in Libya, Tunisia and Niger.
This event will be the occasion to denounce the continuity of European and national migration policies. Indeed, a large camp for asylum seekers has just opened in Geneva. In semi-prison conditions, people are now being held for several months between the airport tarmac and a highway.
Website – https://www.refugeesinlibya.org/from-tripoli-to-geneva-2
20th to 27th of September from Thuringia to Berlin
We’ll Come United Caravan & Parade
We will organize a caravan in September from Thuringia through Saxony and Brandenburg to Berlin. A week of protest, camping, swarming, empowerment, creative actions, demonstrations – ending in a united parade on 27 September in Berlin.
Ten years after the March of Hope and the so-called Summer of Migration, the situation for people on the move has worsened dramatically. Racist border regimes are being expanded, rights are being rolled back, and far-right forces are gaining strength across Europe. But we will not be silent.
We come together from different cities and struggles – as people affected by racist structures, as allies and activists, as local initiatives, housing networks, climate justice groups, feminist movements, care alliances, and anti-deportation campaigns. We are part of a transnational movement for freedom of movement and equal rights for all.
This caravan is our response – loud, collective, and unstoppable…
Website – https://www.welcome-united.org/en/
3rd to 5th October 2025 in Rabat
10 Years of Rest House Baobab, 20 years of ARCOM:
´We migrate to live, not to die!`
We organize a conference in Rabat, marking the 20th anniversary of the “Association of Refugees and Migrant Communities in Morocco” (ARCOM), an organisation founded by migrants to defend their fundamental rights in Morocco. In addition, the BAOBAB women’s shelter, a safe haven for migrant women and their children on their often life-threatening journey founded by ARCOM, is celebrating its tenth anniversary.
The conference aims to raise awareness of the long-standing struggles of ARCOM and the BAOBAB shelter against the European border regime. Under the motto ‘Nous émigrons pour vivre et non pour mourir’ (We migrate to live, not to die), the situation of women, children, and unaccompanied minors on the escape routes will be highlighted. Together, we want to analyse the political tightening of restrictions due to pressure from the EU and discuss the daily solidarity work of organisations in the Maghreb states. The voices of migrants themselves will be at the centre of the conference…
Website – https://afrique-europe-interact.net/2218-0-Konferenz-ARCOM-2025.html?article_id=2218&clang=0
Middle of October 2025 in Rome
Stop the “Memorandum of Understanding“ between Italy and Libya
In February 2017 a Memorandum of Understanding on “fighting illegal migration” was signed by Italian and Libyan governments. Refugees in Libya, on the International Refugee Day, June 20, 2025 called for an immediate stop to all agreements with Libya on illegal pushback and detention of migrants, actions which often lead to more violence, torture, and rapes.
We have denounced, as witness, the Italian government’s release of the criminal Osama Almasri. Our communications are surveilled by Italian secret services on behalf of the governments, as it has been ascertained in the Paragon case. We, the victims, are strictly controlled, while the criminals are free to continue their acts.
We are not alone. A large part of civil society, churches, journalists, humanitarian and rescue NGOs are supporting this campaign. Join our mobilization for action days in Rome in the middle of October 2025!
Website – https://www.refugeesinlibya.org/post/stop-the-memorandum-italy-libya
