GREECE: HUNDREDS OF VULNERABLE REFUGEE CHILDREN LEFT UNPROTECTED AND HOMELESS
In the run up to the festive season, an estimated 570 unaccompanied refugee and migrant children who reached Greece seeking safety, find themselves homeless and exposed to the cold and uncertainty in Athens or other big cities in the mainland. Many others live in dire and unsafe conditions in one of the islands’ refugee camps; while others are being detained - often among adults - in police cells or detention centers until a place is found in a shelter.
There have been long-standing challenges in the protection of these vulnerable children in Greece - before, during and after the refugee crisis. The insufficient number of places in shelters, the absence of a guardianship system and problematic age assessment procedures are some of the main protection gaps.
At the end of November 2018, there were 3,786 unaccompanied or separated children registered as such in Greece. Out of those, 2,038 were out of long-term or temporary accommodation including 657 unaccompanied children staying in Reception and Identification Centres (RICs) on the Aegean islands or Evros and 72 in protective custody. In addition, 570 children were reported homeless and 292 as living in informal housing arrangements.[1] Not to mention that the real number of unaccompanied children still remains unclear as many of them may not have been identified by the authorities as such or did not have access to them.
The exposure of so many children to homelessness, protective custody or the squalid conditions in hotspots and often to exploitation and abuse is linked to a great extent to the insufficient number of places in special shelters. The current number of such places is 1,213. Despite an increase since last year, the number is seriously inadequate for the existing needs and these shelters often face the risk of closure as a result of lack of funding.[2] Meanwhile, Law 4554/2018 envisages a system of guardianship[3] that may be able to provide more effective support to unaccompanied or separated children. However, this legislation has not yet been implemented.
Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) and PRO ASYL have been following and supporting through social and legal work unaccompanied or separated children on the islands and mainland for many years. Eleni Velivassaki, RSA lawyer who represents unaccompanied children before national authorities and international human rights bodies said: “The national authorities have been failing for years to increase sufficiently accommodation places and develop an effective protection system. The result is seeing so many unaccompanied children living in the streets or being placed in 'protective custody', a form of detention that cannot be justified under international law and violates the right to liberty and security of the children”.
The stories in this article aim to shed light to the plight of hundreds of unaccompanied boys who found themselves homeless or in informal housing arrangements as a result of persistent serious gaps in the protection system for this vulnerable group. In the absence of long-term accommodation, one child was offered the option of protective custody to escape homelessness.
Footnotes
- Source: National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA), https://reliefweb.int ↑
- See Praksis press release: https://www.praksis.gr; and https://www.efsyn.gr. ↑
- Source : Law 4554/2018 (in Greek) https://www.kodiko.gr ; also https://www.unicef.org. ↑
- Names have been changed to protect the children’s anonymity. ↑
- The Greek Reception and Identification Service (RIS). ↑
- On concerns over the practice of protective custody for UAMs in Greece see: http://www.arsis.gr. ↑
