Warsaw, Poland 26 March— Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges the Polish government to restore access to asylum and international protection for all people arriving in Poland, as a fundamental human right. In the year since access to asylum procedures were suspended, MSF has witnessed people seeking safety exposed to serious harm caused by the continued denial of asylum and violent push backs into Belarus.
On March 26, 2025, the Polish government approved legislation suspending the right to submit applications for international protection through asylum procedures at the Polish-Belarusian border. Following complaints from civil society and NGOs, the Polish government introduced limited exemption clauses, including pregnant women, unaccompanied children, and people requiring specialized medical treatment. In theory, these exemptions were designed to protect the rights of some vulnerable people to apply for international protection. Yet in practice, MSF has seen that the exemptions are largely meaningless, and people with serious medical conditions are often denied access to asylum procedures.
People with fractures, frostbite, and amputations are prevented from seeking asylum.
The safety of people on the move has become a matter of chance. Their access to protection depends entirely on the individual officer they encounter, who operates without any clear guidance or reference framework. These 11 individuals were eventually granted entry to Poland to apply for asylum, but only after these interim measures were granted by the European Court of Human Rights.
Legal organizations were forced to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, who issued interim measures preventing the Polish border guards from pushing people back to Belarus. But by the time the court’s ruling was issued, people who had been previously pushed back were already in a critical health state.
Despite the ruling, some people in critical condition continue to be stranded in the forest. They need to be urgently transferred to the nearby hospitals in Poland for medical care.
In the past year, MSF has witnessed people pushed back into the forest or refused entry at official border crossing points, including patients with pneumonia, anemia, and tuberculosis. Later, many of these same individuals attempted to cross again. They returned in far worse condition, bearing deteriorating injuries from violence or from the extreme cold of the forest. Only at this stage — because of the severity of their medical condition — were they allowed to apply for asylum, often requiring life‑saving but dangerous procedures such as amputations due to advanced gangrene from frostbite.
On top of this, MSF has documented pushbacks of at least 21 people as soon as they were discharged from two border hospitals in Podlasie in 2025, and more cases have likely occurred in hospitals where MSF and civil society organizations are not operating.
“Individuals found with life‑threatening condition in the -forest — often suffering from dehydration, untreated injuries, or violence-inflicted wounds — are taken to hospital for emergency treatment, only to be apprehended and forced back through the border fence immediately upon discharge,” said Dr Silvesto. “These people were far from recovered at the time they were removed from medical care and forced back into the forest. Can you imagine being treated for fractures or frostbite that can even lead to limb amputation and then being left on your own in Europe’s most ancient forest?”
Children are not exempt from the cruelty
Among those most at risk are unaccompanied children – yet the system offers them no reliable protection either. When children arrive at the border, the decision to initiate an age assessment (to determine if they should be allowed in under the exemption for unaccompanied minors) rests entirely on the Border Guards or Military personnel who detain them, without any independent oversight or specialized child‑protection expertise.
“When the age assessment starts, they use wrist X‑rays or dental examinations that harm children and are scientifically unreliable as MSF highlighted in a recent report, ‘Age as a verdict’, Said Dr Silvestro. “On top of that they are not allowed to appeal the decision.” Children wrongly determined to be adults are excluded from all protections afforded to unaccompanied minors under Polish, EU, and international law.
This law that blatantly violates human rights and EU law has not deterred people from trying to seek safety in Poland, and the violence against them continues. The violations of the rights of people who are trying to seek safety on European soil remain invisible to the eyes of Europeans.
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Related:
- MSF in Poland
- Poland
