Humanitarian organisations welcome the transition to Greek Government management of all aspects of service provision for asylum seekers on the Greek islands and for unaccompanied children throughout Greece. However, as this transition begins, and the European Commission scales down support for humanitarian assistance currently provided by nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), there are growing concerns over the potential for deteriorating living conditions and diminishing access to essential services, as few details have been released about the plans for how this handover will be implemented.

In just over two weeks, on 31st July, the majority of European funding provided directly for NGOs responding on the Greek islands will come to an end. These NGOs have been providing aid for the nearly 14,000 people who are seeking international protection on the islands, but unable to move due to policies underpinned by the European Union – Turkey Statement. Under the new system, the Commission will support the Government to manage all aspects of the response through asylum, migration and integration funds (AMIF) and internal security funds (ISF) through DG HOME. The transition is a change from the current system in which NGOs provide services funded by the European Commission (directly through DG ECHO). In addition to the response on the islands, funding and responsibility for meeting the needs of the 2,250 unaccompanied children across Greece will largely also transition from DG ECHO to DG HOME funding under Government management.

This handover has the potential to be a positive step if implemented transparently, promptly and in close collaboration with the organisations currently providing services. However, to date, no national response plan has been released, and information about how the transition will be implemented is severely lacking. Without a clear transition plan, gaps in services will likely occur, and men, women and children may be put at greater risk, without the health, legal and other services and safety they need and have the right to.

We are already seeing the impact of similar service provider transitions. In Lesvos, for example, the contract for the organisation providing primary health care and conducting vulnerability assessments as part of the asylum procedure in the Moria Reception and Identification Centre ended on 30^th May. Its 10 doctors, who had provided care for the more than 2,000 people living in the facility, as well as supported the Greek Asylum Service with vulnerability assessments, were replaced by just three doctors meant to fulfil the same responsibilities. Information from the ground indicates there is now a backlog in vulnerability assessments in both Chios and Lesvos, and a dire lack of primary health care.

Additionally, there has been a persistent shortage of safe accommodation and alternative care options for the children arriving to Greece alone throughout the response. There are currently 2,250 such unaccompanied children across Greece in need of safe shelter, but just 1,270 shelter spaces available. Roughly 1,000 unaccompanied children are therefore on a waiting list for shelter, with some living in squats, on the streets, or placed in “police protective custody” (detention) while they wait. As a result of this transition, at least five shelters are set to close, resulting in fewer shelter spaces available, and the number of children in detention, as a form of accommodation, is on the rise. Other forms of appropriate care, such as foster care and semi-independent living, which are more cost-efficient and in line with the needs and best interests of the children, have received little coordinated support or approval from the Government, and there has been no information released about if and when even existing, small scale alternative care initiatives will be continued, let alone expanded upon.

Any gaps in services caused by an uncoordinated transition would impact the health and well-being of thousands of already vulnerable people. It is therefore critical to learn from the lessons of the past years of this response and avoid a foreseeable humanitarian emergency.

We call on:

• The Greek Government to consult with UN agencies, donors, NGOs and civil society to urgently develop and release a national response plan for the transition period and beyond. This plan should include clear steps for close collaboration and a smooth handover between current and new service providers to ensure no disruption or deterioration of services and living conditions on the islands or for unaccompanied children throughout Greece.
• The Greek Government to invest in and facilitate the development of more effective and sustainable forms of alternative care for unaccompanied children, particularly supervised semi-independent living and foster care.
• The European Commission to provide technical and coordination support to ensure that its funds are available, accessible, and used effectively and efficiently to prevent against disruption of essential services. This should include facilitating regular coordination meetings between relevant organisations and the competent authorities as necessary, to ensure a smooth handover between service providers.
• The EU and other donors to encourage the Government to ensure continuation of health, mental health and psychosocial support, education and legal services on the islands and a variety of appropriate alternative care options and protection services for unaccompanied children throughout Greece.

World Refugee Day: SolidarityNow underlines the needs on the ground  for refugees living in Greece.

The celebration of the World Refugee Day finds our country at a crucial moment. At present, there are no more than 40,000 refugees in the Greek mainland; nevertheless, an unreasonably large number of them still live in camps under conditions that are anything but satisfactory.

SolidarityNow has already stressed out that social inclusion and integration should now be the priority, i.e. the primary access of these people to the fundamental goods of health, education, labor, etc. Only by this way we will be able to ensure the already wounded social cohesion.

Specifically, SolidarityNow requests:

1. Direct plan for the evacuation and #close_the_camps and transference of the people to urban areas to become feasible the implementation of the integration policies.
2. Unrestricted access for all, whether they are in the islands or in mainland, to the asylum process, while respecting all the procedural assurances deriving from national, community and international law.
3. Access to the labor market for all asylum seekers (and the pre-registered ones).
4. The registration of all children in the national education system to ensure their smooth socialization in the country.
5. The unhindered access for all to the health system without discrimination
6. Immediate activation of Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund to support the respective actions, focusing on the housing allowance for persons who are granted the refugee status and are therefore not eligible for asylum accommodation.

The refugees will live with us. The sooner we respond to this fact with integration policies, the better we will protect ourselves, the local communities and the cohesion of the Greek society.

By Eirini Vlachou, lawyer, Head of Legal Service at the Athens Solidarity Center of Solidarity Now

The most important issue one thinks of when dealing theoretically or practically with the so-called refugee crisis in Greece and the EU, is the integration of recognized refugees into the labour market and the Greek and European society in general – integration of culture, language and values.

This challenge, which is approaching for all of us and which concerns not only asylum seekers but also third-country nationals living in Greece, is for many people the most important aspect of the issue. It is essentially a problem that does not yet concern as much as it should the state and civil society even though the management of many vulnerable people with multiple and serious demands, ranging from daily survival to the process of recognizing them as refugees in Greece, is now urgently required.

In this process, the most important problem for asylum seekers in Greece is the lack of information about their rights in the country, but also about their obligations, procedures, deadlines, etc. Even people who have been in Greece for a long period of time and may have been pre-recorded, fully recorded, detained, or even interviewed to be recognized as refugees, often find out for the first time what a request for international protection means shortly before or even after their first instance interview.

A serious problem is the almost impossible – at least in Attica – access for asylum seekers to the Asylum Service if it is not the day of their interview or the day of the renewal of their Asylum Seeker’s Card. As a result, they fail to obtain information even on matters of major importance, such decisions on their international protection request or other equally important issues, for example progress of family reunification requests under the Dublin Regulation.

This established situation has led applicants to seek the assistance of lawyers and advisers to simply accompany them to the Asylum Service or to provide them with a lawyer’s note so that they can reach the entrance of the Service. The issue of access to the asylum procedure is not a simple administrative problem. It is linked to the very core of the right to international protection: this is the basis on which countries are legally considered as safe or not for asylum seekers and the basis on which this country’s tomorrow citizens are “trained” to be either frustrated and unable to take responsibility or to have a sense of respect towards the rule of law of the host country.

However, the most important problem the refugee population in the country is facing right now- and with it, all professionals and volunteers in the refugee sector – is the situation on the islands; caused by the EU-Turkey deal, the problematic implementation of the agreement marked a year in March 2017. In the predominant cases of Lesvos and Moria, which have been the subjects of domestic and international research, but also on other islands, people have been wedged for months in inhumane and even dangerous conditions for their lives, without substantial access to the asylum process – the latter being a very important problem for our legal culture. Asylum seekers on the Greek islands are not allowed to go to the mainland to have their asylum claims considered there except in specific cases of vulnerability judged on-the-spot. Some are just waiting for their return to Turkey, a safe third country according to the EU-Turkey deal, many are leaving illegally to other European countries with traffickers who demand huge sums of money, in the hope that something positive will happen at the place they end up to, while others just leave for Athens and the mainland with the same hope. The ones who have no hope, commit self-immolations or go on a hunger strikes as an ultimate attempt to be heard.

Besides the obvious humanitarian risk and, in many cases, the already manifested danger to public security and social peace and besides the increasing racist attacks against refugees, what is particularly important for the legal world is the access to the asylum process for refugees on the islands. More specifically, the problem concerns the totally problematic imposition of the geographical constraint which is appropriate only for detention and in conflict to the to date rights of asylum seekers who should only be restricted and/or detained in very special circumstances and under specific conditions; and ultimately it concerns the separation of the state regarding the examination of asylum claims in the mainland and on the islands, while the Asylum Service is unified. After all, detention of asylum seekers on the islands after the first rejection of their request and up to the second instance of their judgment is very common.

As time passes, the problems are deepening and developments in Turkey are far from justifying its designated status as a safe third country. Fortunately, institutions are reacting with the European Court of Human Rights being the leading one; the Court recently accepted an Iranian refugee’s claim for protection and banned, at least temporarily, his deportation to Turkey. This development is particularly promising at a time when the messages from Greece and Europe were and are, the acceleration by any means of the asylum process, with parallel reductions to the rights of asylum seekers which can even lead to the limitation of the possibility for appealing rejection decisions on asylum applications.

Those who believe that Justice can teach, they have something to hope for: a shift of the European and Greek legal order to the requirements of international law for the rights of asylum seekers.