In February, the report “Beaten Back at Europe’s Borders. 2025 Annual Report on Pushbacks” was published, which was produced under the leadership of the Belgian NGO 11.11.11, in cooperation with other non-governmental organizations, including “I Want to Help Refugees”.

At the end of 2025, the GPB sent public information requests to the State Border Guard and the Emergency Medical Service, inviting them to provide information on the availability and scope of healthcare, as well as on the challenges faced by authorities in the period from 2021 to 2025 on the Latvian-Belarusian border and in detention centres.

From April 28 to August 15, 6559 people have been prevented from crossing the Latvia–Belarus border, while seven individuals have been admitted to the country on humanitarian grounds. It should be noted that since the beginning of this year, a total of 8490 border crossing attempts have been prevented, and during the warm season of the year, activity at the Latvia–Belarus border has been high. During the reporting period, more than 100 border crossing attempts have also been prevented daily, specifically: 148 on May 1, 123 on June 3, 121 on July 9, and 122 on July 19. This data can also be interpreted to understand the approximate number of people at the Latvia–Belarus border.

Until mid-March 2025, GPB had not received any requests from people who are at Latvia-Belarus border. The first message came on March 16, 2025, which coincided with the closure of the BCP Pāternieki. Since then, GPB has received in total 46 number of requests on its alarm phone sent by people seeking advice about the access to asylum in Latvia from Belarus, looking for their missing relatives or reaching out for humanitarian or medical aid.

This report presents the data on migrant deaths on the EU-Belarusian border since the traffic on this route intensified and the humanitarian crisis in the border area began in the summer of 2021. By the end of March 2024, 116 border deaths had been documented in four countries (Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) and at least another 26 cases had been reported by migrants in testimonies.

On 11 July 2023 both the “Report to the Latvian Government on the periodic visit to Latvia carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 10 to 20 May 2022” (here and after – Report) and the “Response of the Latvian Government to the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) on its periodic visit to L