to guarantee full harmonization with the EU acquis. Further efforts are needed to promote stronger links between migration policies, social and welfare services and the work of the CSOs providing services focused on inclusion and integration of migrants. The EU concluded readmission agreements with all WB Countries. In addition, the WB countries have concluded bilateral readmission agreements between each other. On the operational level, the majority of migration management structures in the WB have been set up according to a migration scenario quite different from the current one. Increase in size and complexity of the migrations in WB is a fact which is challenging the response of the national authorities to the new migration reality and leading to unsustainable situations where one social worker in the system is responsible for 180 unaccompanied minors (UNICEF working group on child protection, June 2017 Serbia, Krnjaca). The migration management is often perceived as a technocratic and security issue exclusively reserved for “Ministries of Force”, detached from the protection and social services. Lack of linkages with the services that CSOs provide is even more important considering that almost 35% of all CSOs registered in the WB countries provide some sort of social services and support to the vulnerable groups (Comparative Analysis of the Role of Civil Society in Providing Social Welfare Services in WB, 2015), and CSOs inclusion in migration management sector could be a tremendous impetus to improvement of the quality of life of migrants. As a result of these two trends, any serious inclusion and integration endeavors of both internal and external migrants in WB countries are seriously hampered. Identification of migrants’ specific needs, differentiation between various groups (refugees, unaccompanied minors, returnees, women and girls at risk, etc.), has to be significantly improved in all WB countries. CSOs could play a very important role and be a reliable partner related to integration of refugees and reintegration of readmission returnees. Finally, the increases in numbers of extra-regional migrants and refugees transiting the region irregularly, combined with the increased numbers of rejected asylum seekers readmitted from the EU, makes this issue a truly regional challenge. Still, lack of regional initiatives and mechanisms in this field is very much visible. On the institutional side there have been few intergovernmental initiatives like MARRI (The Migration, Asylum, Refugees Regional Initiative), which remain to be focused on security and police cooperation, while tackling human dimension of migrations in a very limited way. CSOs proved to have more dynamic networks and regional response on variety of topics, like IRIS Network, which provided a very good response during the refugee crisis and managed to open active channels of communication throughout the Balkan Route. Furthermore, countries of Western Balkans (WB) are characterised with the transitional situation affected by extreme levels of unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. The recent crisis has put social protection systems under the unprecedented challenge of addressing ever increasing levels of exclusion with reduced public resources. All of the countries on WB started the process of outsourcing the social services in order to reach higher numbers of beneficiaries and reduce the costs for social protection. Still, a significant proportion of low-income citizens have poor access to social safety nets and to services in question. This is due to the fact that both the public authorities ordering the services and organisations delivering it lack knowledge, capacities and joint dialog on basic standards of the social services. All of this is especially needed in the situation where quality social services are needed to be provided with reduced public budgets. Licensing is an approach to finding new participative ways to address social inclusion and socio-economic development by improving the provision of social services delivered by CSOs in the Western Balkans.

### 1.5. Related programmes and other donor activities

All countries in the region are parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol and have established national asylum systems. Due to the current refugee crisis, the existing asylum legislation in most WB countries is under revision. In Serbia, new Asylum Law is expected in 2017. In B&H, new Law on asylum has been adopted in 2016, together with the Strategy 2016-2020. Asylum Law in Albania is expected to be amended soon. New Asylum Law in Montenegro was adopted in 2016, while Asylum Law in FYROM is from in 2015. Still, while the asylum legislation covers in detail the

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