In search of safety:
The struggle of Afghan single mothers in Greece
In search of safety:
The struggle of Afghan single mothers in Greece
“Can you imagine walking through deep snow for several nights in the mountains, holding your children, never knowing if you will manage to arrive somewhere alive? There are images haunting me that I cannot speak of… We had been kidnapped by thieves and held hostage without access to water, food or a toilet, we were beaten, detained, deported and pushed back by various police forces. We slept in places where none of us was safe and I suffered the worst nightmares without being able to shout for help, because I was afraid we would be caught by the police and be deported again.”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
Refugee single mothers face aggravated challenges and protection risks in Greece. Many have experienced family separation, as well as risks of exploitation and gender-based violence, physical harm and injury. These cause additional psychosocial stress and trauma prior to reaching Greece and thereafter. Their children are also at higher risk of physical or mental harm.
Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) spoke with six mothers from Afghanistan who described their situation, their specific protection risks but also their strength. RSA has undertaken legal representation of all these women. All except one arrived in Greece during the winter 2022 through the Evros land border. They are currently living in Controlled Access Centers (camps) on the mainland, but faced homelessness or unsafe environments upon arrival in Athens.
Single mothers spoke to us of the challenges they faced while trying to adjust to a new role now serving as head of the family and sole caretakers for their children, which further deepens their need for protection and support. They highlight their first priority towards finding, at last, safety for their children and themselves. They describe their traumatic experiences during their journeys towards Europe. Feeling now stuck in remote camps, trying to cope with their asylum claims’ processes and processing custody issues with no information, without sufficient services and without receiving promptly the entitled cash assistance, they speak of their own journey towards integration in the society. They deal with the need to work and at the same time proceed with all their obligations, while lacking safe children-friendly places. However, despite all the hardships, their voices also reflect their strength and hope for a normal life, for their children and themselves.
We should also note that there are no available numbers of single mothers among asylum seekers and refugees in Greece. Statistics released by the Ministry of Migration and Asylum only contain a breakdown of asylum applicants by gender, age and nationality. Its Reception and Identification Service (RIS) provides statistics on single-parent families in general, available up to the end of September 2022.[1]
Being both parents at once, “lawyers” and breadwinners for the family
Single refugee mothers we spoke to and their children have all escaped Afghanistan and faced family separation in their home country, in transit or in Greece. In some cases, their husbands have passed away or disappeared. In other cases, these women got divorced or escaped abusive relationships.
They have been single parents for periods ranging from four months to five years. All of them still struggle to adjust to their new roles and responsibilities. Coming from a country where men are considered the “breadwinners” and legal representatives of the family and where women are usually not allowed to work or even attend school, they find themselves confronted with a new reality in Greece. They have to be effective advocates for their families in their asylum procedure and at the same time good mothers. They have little time and energy for themselves to reflect on and process past experiences and trauma.
At the same time, they have to cope with the cultural shock stemming from sudden confrontation with different perceptions of gender roles, family, rights and the law.
“While in Greece, a refugee single mother needs to be the lawyer and breadwinner of her family, and, at the same time, be a mother, while we are familiar with neither the language nor the law. Can you imagine doing that with all the bad memories coming after you every night?”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
“When my husband got killed, I was suddenly the only one responsible for my two boys. I had to solve all our problems. I had to find a way to escape from our enemies back home. I had to find a way to find safety for us. I didn’t know what to do or where to go.”
Fatima* (46),
recognised refugee, with one son aged 16 in Greece and one son aged 15 in Turkey
Searching for safety
Many of the women we spoke with were exposed to homelessness and/or unsafe environments upon arrival to Greece.
“We were homeless at first. I was scared of rape so we felt more safe sleeping in a public space among people, in the cold. My mind and body were dominated by fear for our lives. I only cared about bringing us to safety and protecting my children.”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
“Staying with my children and our small bag in the streets of Athens, I felt lost and helpless in this foreign country. I only wanted to find a safe shelter for us to rest. I needed only one moment to feel calmer. But we shared a house with many others for a month and didn’t even have a proper place to sleep or take a shower. I prayed: ‘May God protect us from the strangers sleeping next to us!’ and I stayed awake every night, sleeping only an hour or two, to watch over my children.”
Parvin* (29),
asylum seeker, with two children aged 9 and 6 in Greece
A safe place and protection from deportation are currently the most pressing concerns for their families. The women speak of safety in terms of protection from any form of forceful return, but also as prompt access to a fair asylum procedure with decent living conditions.
“It is not easy to be a single parent, a woman and a refugee at the same time. There are many things to worry about. The asylum procedure is very stressful for me, especially when, at the same time, I have to constantly worry about covering our basic needs. I tried to work in a factory for two days per week, but I could not find a safe place to leave my children while working, so I had to quit.”
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
All of the women we spoke with reported efforts to regularly visit psychologists. At the same time, many suffer from different physical illnesses that affect both their health and their ability to act as heads of their families. Despite this, the women put the well-being of their children before their own health. They explain that the lack of sufficient services for asylum seekers in the camps creates further obstacles in accessing their families’ rights and basic needs. This reality highlights the pressing need of specialised support infrastructure for single mothers, almost absent in Greece.
“As a single woman trying to reach safety in Europe my greatest fears on the journey were death, injury or rape of my children or myself. As a mother I did everything to protect my children. I put myself as a shield in front of them. I now try to forget the past, but most of the time I feel so overwhelmed that I only manage to keep our room clean and prepare food for my children. On a normal day, I get out of the container only to get the garbage out. I feel like a broken stranded ship stuck in the mud. My life has the colour of dark grey – as we say in my country, the ‘colour of no hope’.”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
“I try my best to get stronger, but it’s hard when you are still waiting for your asylum interview and you are so stressed”
Parvin Hassani* (29),
asylum seeker, with two children aged 9 and 6 in Greece
Reaching Europe comes with more trauma
All of the women we spoke to had to irregularly reach Greece, due to the near-total lack of safe and legal pathways to Europe for refugees. Most have reported to us that they experienced illegal forced returns (push backs) on different occasions and in different locations throughout their perilous escape to Greece, often resulting in separation of their family and even in disappearance of their loved ones. The trauma inflicted on them by these human rights violations lives on today.
“Now my greatest worry is my son, who suffers from mental health issues and he is alone in Turkey. When we tried reaching Greece, he was separated from our group, the Greek police found him and sent him back to Turkey. For days I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I was crying all day. Eventually I found out that he was beaten and detained in Turkey. I just want us to be all together and safe and I want my boys to be able to go to school and study.”
Fatima* (46),
recognised refugee, who was separated from her younger son at the Greek-Turkish land border.
Her son remains alone in Turkey.
“My daughter is afraid of the police and shakes terrified simply when hearing the word ‘police’, because we were caught in Greece and sent back several times. We have been detained under horrible conditions in Greece and in Turkey, with no food, and with the police even throwing away the food we had in our bags. It was unbearable for me to witness that and know, at the same time, that my child was hungry. Do you know how it feels when you have to run in the dark through the forest, carrying your child in your arms, holding your bag and with the smuggler shouting to you?”
Palvasha* (34),
asylum seeker, with one daughter aged 7 in Greece,
who suffered an illegal forced return from Greece to Turkey.
Stuck in remote camps, trying to cope with their asylum claims’ processes
As Refugee Support Aegean (RSA) reported earlier this year in two relevant publications (1, 2), services have been highly limited inside the camps, especially after the departure of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) on 20 March 2023. Legal advice, psycho-social support as well as language classes and transportation services were radically reduced if not completely cut off. At the same time, since early February there have been serious gaps in interpretation services in the camps. There is neither provision for specialised medical services inside the camps (i.e. psychiatrists, paediatric care or gynaecologists) nor for prescribed medication. Single mothers living in the camps describe their problems related to access to public health services, transportation costs and translation services.
Moreover, delays in the registration of their asylum claims directly affected their access to monthly allowances. In one case a woman has not received any financial assistance since she arrived in Greece more than six months ago, while others had to wait for several weeks. As a result, they cannot cover basic needs for themselves and their children, while they face obstacles in reaching any form of support services in Athens as they lack the financial means to cover the transportation cost.
“My youngest daughter is only three years old. I often have to take her with me if I have to go to Athens to meet with my lawyer or my psychologist. She gets tired from walking and asks me to buy her a snack or something to drink, but I don’t have money even to pay the ticket. In the camp, we share food with my friends. We cook together and help each other out. But it is hard.”
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
After finding shelter in a camp, they had to wait for a few weeks or even months to finally register their asylum applications, receive proper documentation and thus protection from arrest and detention.
For example, Arezu* from Afghanistan, aged 33, single mother with three children aged 13, 9 and 3, tells us her story. She arrived in Greece four years ago, together with her husband, but he abandoned them once in Greece. In winter 2022, she got a rejection decision on her asylum claim, based on the application of the “safe third country concept”, and managed to submit a subsequent application five months later.
“A few days after my husband abandoned us, we had to leave our flat from the ESTIA program[2], and move to a camp near Athens. The idea of moving back to a camp reminded me of the nightmares we experienced in Moria camp. It was very hard. I also had to take care of our legal status. We got a rejection and I couldn’t manage to submit a new application for months. There were no appointments. When I finally managed to make the submission, I couldn’t get our new asylum seeker cards for weeks because the computer system wasn’t working, as they told me.”
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
Obstacles for integration and custody
The mothers who spoke to us explained that they can go to Athens for legal, social or health services only during the hours when their children are at school. Those that have babies or toddlers have to take them with them. Transport costs from remote camps to the city are not covered by the state.
These limitations often hinder the women in attending appointments with psychologists, hospitals or their lawyers, or even mandatory asylum interviews. Asylum Service offices such as in Piraeus – responsible for Afghan refugees – do not offer a child-friendly space for single parents to leave their children until they conclude their appointment.
“Recently I went to apply for my subsequent asylum application, together with all my children. I was holding my small one in my arms during the interview, my big one was sitting next to me and my other boy was sitting in front of the office. I had no place to leave my children in the asylum service. When you find yourself in such a situation, it is not easy to remember to say everything which is important for your claim in the best way.”
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
Another major concern for single mothers is securing custody of their children. Conditions in their home countries and along the journey often mean that critical civil status processes have not been conducted and that documents such as family books, divorce acts, death certificates or custody rulings have not been obtained or got confiscated, stolen or lost along the journey. To apply for travel documents for their children, for instance, single parents have to produce either a notarised sworn declaration of their family status in the home country (ένορκη βεβαίωση) or custody ruling by a Greek family court.
The departure of IOM from the camps in 2023 has left critical gaps in information on family law issues. None of the women we spoke to was aware of the custody procedures or of their right to apply for free legal representation to the Greek state.
“Even if we are given asylum, I need to have legal guardianship of my children to be able to act on their behalf. This worries me since I am a single mother. I heard from other mothers that I won’t be able to get travel documents for my children without going to court. There was no one in the camp who could give me information on that or assist me, there were not even translators. Thankfully I eventually had support from my lawyer, else I wouldn’t have even properly understood the implications of custody as a single parent, not to speak about the procedure itself. There are many single mothers like me who are worried and need help with this.”
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
“When we tried to reach Greece for the second time, the police found us near Komotini. Before returning us back to Turkey, they searched us several times. In the end, they found our passports and Taskeras [Afghan identity document]. They took them away and never handed them back. The third time we entered Greece we managed to apply for asylum, but we no longer had any documents in our hands.”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
Empowerment of the women and hope for a “normal” life
While facing great hardships in order to fulfil their obligations as parents, all mothers report that their greatest wish is to see their children happy and calm living a “normal life”, something they themselves never had.
“My dream is to live somewhere safe with my children. I want to see them go happily to school. I want to study the language of the country I live in and I want to become a teacher. I want us to live somewhere we can call our home and I want my small daughter to have a pink room, because that’s her favourite colour. And I want all these problems we have now to be gone.“
Arezu* (33),
asylum seeker, with three children aged 13, 9 and 3 in Greece
“I know I am strong because I managed things until now, but I had no life of my own and no childhood. I wish for my daughter to have everything I couldn’t have and to become a happy and active member of society. She is my everything. I wish for us one day to get asylum and have our papers, a safe home outside the camp, a normal life. I want to learn the Greek language and be able to work. I want my daughter to be happy at school. I want the Greek society to see us as humans and I wish the Greeks to look at my daughter like they look at their children.”
Palvasha* (34),
asylum seeker, with one daughter aged 7 in Greece, and two more children, separated during their journey to Europe
Single mothers think of their problems all day, throughout their daily lives, but upon being asked to reflect on the hardships they already survived from, their strength shows up in their troubled faces and they smile.
“Everything a woman would pray to avoid, has happened to me. But I am proud I didn’t surrender to the Taliban regime and I brought my two boys to safety. Every time I fell, I stood up again. But what happened to me has left its marks. I am not feeling good, I forget a lot and I often feel depressed and suffer from headaches.”
Marzia* (38),
asylum seeker, with two sons aged 16 and 6 in Greece and one daughter missing
“I have to be twice as strong for my children, but I often feel broken. Even though it is very hard to be a single mother, the hardships we have been through during our journey towards Greece but also since we arrived here, have taught me that I have the power to overcome the worst obstacles and to protect my children. When I look back at what we’ve been through, I think ‘wow, we managed it, we survived’ and I feel a little bit proud.”
Parvin* (29),
asylum seeker, with two children aged 9 and 6 in Greece
“I have to be a mother, a father and a friend for my child. She should never feel that she needs something she does not have, that is my goal. Thus, I try to make her happy, give her a family, support her in school, listen to her and answer her questions. She should be able to be a child, after all. She already had too many bad experiences. It is time for her to play and be carefree. This is what I try to remind myself, and I learn, everyday, to be the best possible mother.”
Somaye* (34),
recognized refugee, with one daughter aged 9 in Greece
* Names of persons cited in this news have been changed to protect safety and privacy.
With the important contribution of the photographer and artist Marily Stroux, who did the illustration, we visualised the stories you read in this text, through 9 sketches that capture what the women told us in their conversations with us. You can see the sketches in the slideshow below
(click the images to enlarge)
Notes
- Latest statistics published by the Identification and Reception Service on the first nine months of 2022 referring to the vulnerable groups identified upon registration of the asylum claim account for 426 single parents (out of 18,046 referrals / 2.4%). Meanwhile recent numbers on asylum applications in the first quarter of 2023 state that 23% of the 12,875 asylum registered asylum applications are female applicants (of all ages). See here. ↑
- The Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation (ESTIA) programme implemented since November 2015, provided decentralised housing to vulnerable asylum applicants in Greece through rental of property. The programme was fully handed over by UNHCR to the Ministry of Migration and Asylum in January 2021, and was terminated at the end of 2022. See here. ↑
