Rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) has launched a critical attack on Greek authorities for mishandling the registration and housing of unaccompanied refugees under the age of 18 on the island of Lesbos.
HRW claims that unaccompanied migrant children arriving on the eastern Aegean island are being incorrectly identified as adults and housed with unrelated adults, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and unable to access the specific care they need, according to Eva Cossé, Greece researcher at HRW.
"Greek authorities need to take responsibility for properly identifying unaccompanied children and providing them the protection and care every child needs," she added. On visits to Lesbos island from May 22 to 28 and June 27 to 30 this year, HRW said it spoke with 20 children, some as young as 15. They said they had been wrongly registered as adults by the Greek authorities.
Registered unaccompanied children should be transferred to safe accommodation, but Greece has a chronic shortage of space. Pending placement in a shelter, the authorities often detain unaccompanied migrant children in police stations, immigration detention facilities and European Union-managed asylum processing centers. As of June 20, 1,149 unaccompanied migrant children were on the waiting list for shelter, including 296 detained in such facilities.
"The problem has grown more acute since the arrival of more than 1 million people in the Greek islands in 2015 and 2016; border closures in countries to the north have effectively trapped asylum seekers and migrants in Greece, and a deeply flawed EU deal with Turkey, signed in March 2016, has led Greece to restrict asylum seekers to the Greek islands with the aim of returning them to Turkey," according to HRW's statement.
NGOs on Lesbos have identified at least 60 people registered as adults who claim to be children.Greek authorities formally registered over 1,800 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and migrant children arriving in Greece in the first five months of 2017. Many of them are from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, countries beset by armed conflict and serious human rights abuses. Some of the others, such as children from Pakistan, were escaping discrimination and poverty.
"Statements from these children about how they feel suggest the situation in which they find themselves in Greece is causing psychological harm and exacerbates existing mental health conditions," HRW said. The organization also made a series of recommendations for authorities in Greece, requesting them to "urgently improve the quality of their age assessment procedures", bringing them in line with international best practices.