Aleksandra Chrzanowska stops for a moment, checks her location on her cell phone, then marches straight into the forest, following no signpost or path. She walks confidently, despite the marshy, uneven ground.

The Bialowieza National Park is Europe's last remaining primeval forest. Since 2021, Chrzanowska, a member of the Warsaw-based human rights organization Association for Legal Intervention, has spent almost every day in the forest on the Polish-Belarusian border. That was when Belarus started to encourage people from third countries to cross into Poland, as a way of exerting pressure on the EU. Poland responded by erecting a border fence and sending people back to Belarus. Since then, the situation at the border has deteriorated into a full-blown humanitarian crisis.

Chrzanowska points to a map on her phone. It is dotted with colored markers. Each represents an "intervention," as the activists from the network Grupa Granica call their humanitarian activities in the forest along the border with Belarus. Usually, this means bringing hot soup, water, clothes, shoes, and power banks for the refugees. In many instances, they also provide medical assistance, and they get support from a doctor if the case is serious.

Since the five-meter-high border fence was erected along the border with Belarus, there has been a sharp increase in injuries like broken bones, and deep cuts from barbed wire. "The fence doesn't stop people," Chrzanowska says. "They have no choice. Their lives are in........

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