The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited the SolidarityNow Solidarity Center
for the most vulnerable populations

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, on the first day of his arrival in Greece, visited the Athens Solidarity Center, to be on the side of the refugees and to see firsthand the taken by the humanitarian crisis in the country.

The Secretary General, as part of a brief visit to our country, visited the SolidarityNow Athens Solidarity Center, where he met and spoke with the President of the organization, Mr. Stelios Zavvos, members of the Board of the organization, employees and volunteers of the program, on how to assist the most vulnerable people in our country.

“I am very moved and it is a great pleasure to visit this Solidarity Center of SolidarityNow. It’s a small place but they provide so much. It’s the first place I am visiting in Greece”, stated the UN Secretary General. To continue referring to the current crisis: “Many thousands of people have lost their lives. When your life is threatened you have to run and seek help. And this crisis today is a crisis of solidarity. For this reason, I want to talk with the world leaders. Because this crisis has become a global issue. My initiative taken is to reinforce each other. The leaders should show their compassion and not to discriminate, not to succumb to xenophobic sentiments. Refugees and migrants can contribute to the community with their skills, their knowledge, their education. And we have to give them education and job opportunities. Instead of building walls we need to build bridges between people”, the UN Secretary General concluded.

The UN Secretary General was informed about our more than 100,000 free services (medical, legal, psychosocial, etc.) that we have offered from 2014 until today, to more than 40,000 vulnerable people affected by the crisis.

“The current visit of the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon at the SolidarityNow Center underlines the vital importance that the international community acknowledges regarding the work that all NGOs, the civil society and all Greek people offer to solve the refugee crisis” noted the President of SolidarityNow, Mr. Stelios Zavvos. And he emphasized: “Above all, it is but an acknowledgment and an encouragement for those who are on the front line serving the European ideals of solidarity and democracy under the most adverse conditions”.

Until today, SolidarityNow has allocated 15 million euros for projects related to addressing the socio-economic and humanitarian crisis in Greece.

Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in our country to meet with Greek officials, will depart tomorrow Saturday, June 18, for Lesvos to meet and talk with refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, volunteers, organizations, citizens and local authorities.

Watch the video of the visit here:

Geneva/Athens, May 25th, 2016. CARE International and its partner organization SolidarityNow ask EU member states to urgently act on their own commitments to relocate refugees from Greece to other countries in the European Union. “The EU needs to act decisively and establish an effective process to quickly relocate 46,000 people. This is the only long-term solution to alleviate the urgent humanitarian situation. Clearing informal camps such as Idomeni doesn’t help to end refugees’ waiting limbo,” says Thomas Rottland, CARE’s team leader in Greece.

The EU’s target of relocating at least 20,000 persons by mid-May has not been met, although it estimates that between 35,000 and 40,000 persons in Greece are eligible for relocation. So far, only 979 have been transferred to other EU member states. Most refugees could not even start their relocation or family reunification process while in Greece. They have to call a hotline via skype, but with a narrow timeframe it becomes quickly overwhelmed with the number of calls. In fact, the hotlines can only take around 300 calls per week. “Refugees are telling us that making an appointment is like winning the lottery. The people here have lived through years of war and had to leave everything behind.” Many refugees have told CARE and SolidarityNow that they had stayed in one of the official camps before and do not want to go back to these isolated locations. “They described the situation in these camps as being worse than in Idomeni. It is not acceptable that they have to wait in yet another camp fearing that the world is forgetting their plight.”

Greek police started on Tuesday to move the approximately 8,000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed Northern border with FYROM to facilities run by the state. Most of the refugees in Greece were on their way to Western Europe to reunite with their families, women and children being the majority. They now live in over 35 overcrowded accommodation sites, without proper access to sanitary facilities, quality food and protection.

“This crisis is absolutely avoidable. Its solution is in the hands of European governments. They have the means and the expertise to provide Greece with the support it has requested. Additional capacity from European governments is urgently needed to improve the humanitarian situation. Most importantly, refugees need to be able to start their requests for relocation and family reunification”, says Epaminondas Farmakis, Managing Director of SolidarityNow. And he continues: “Unfortunately, at the World Humanitarian Summit, world leaders did not agree on concrete actions to help end those conflicts, which endanger the lives of millions of people and have caused them to flee terror and desperation”.

SolidarityNow participates in the 1st World Humanitarian Summit by the UN, taking place in Istanbul from the 22^nd to the 24^th of May 2016. It is expected to bring together the largest humanitarian organizations worldwide and over 70 top leaders who will visit in order to participate in the global dialogue on pressing global humanitarian issues.

The inability of the international community to confront a global humanitarian crisis has sparked great insecurity and instability around the world. As the humanitarian system is being challenged, we are called to do more and for more people, and at a greater cost. The failures and proposed solutions for these ongoing issues are the subject of the first ever World Humanitarian Summit, which takes place in Turkey.

“The Summit takes place while people on the move are fleeing conflict and poverty, and trying to reach Europe in hope of creating a new, safe and dignified life. Millions of our fellow human beings live under inhumane conditions awaiting the EU’s decisions. We must realize though that the Summit is essentially humanitarian action, humanitarian aid, the meaning of humanity and solidarity as values to which we must commit” says Epaminondas Farmakis, Managing Director of SolidarityNow. “SolidarityNow is at the center of the European humanitarian crisis, but emphasizes on collecting data, best practices and identifying the methodological gaps of humanitarian-type intervention so as to design and implement better-focused projects and activities to relieve the vulnerable, and people on the move. With its participation in the Summit, SolidarityNow – which has thus far allocated 15 mil. euros to develop 48 emergency programs -, aims to further build and strengthen partnerships to achieve common goals such as is the protection, prevention, relief, and the preservation of human dignity for all.”

The first World Humanitarian Summit takes place under these global circumstances, with the participation of Member States, civil society and the private sector, who are invited to commit to five core responsibilities set by the UN Secretary General:

• Global leadership to prevent and end conflict
•  Uphold the norms that safeguard humanity
• Leave no one behind
• Change people’s lives- from delivering aid to ending need
• Invest in Humanity.

SolidarityNow participates in the civil society forum (Exhibition Fair) of the Summit, along with 300 other organizations from around the globe, presenting the organization’s findings and actions based on its multilayered humanitarian response and the involved people’s perspective on their experience and needs.

 “The World Humanitarian Summit takes place at the peak of a global humanitarian crisis we are all called to face, as the number of people suffering from the consequences of conflicts and natural disasters is constantly rising,” says Arianna Tsolakoglou, the Advocacy officer of SolidarityNow and the organization’s Focal Point to the Summit.” “It offers, however, the unique opportunity to reach an international consensus which upholds and reaffirms humanitarian principles and at the same time, to alter the current global humanitarian modus operandi in order to better serve all those in need. It is a vast, multi-stakeholder event, but also an ongoing process, involving governments, donors, civil society organizations, the private sector and representatives of affected populations. And if there is one thing all these actors can agree on, it is the need for a serious discussion about boosting, globally, the humanitarian response. Here at SolidarityNow, we feel the need and that we ought to be part of and contribute to this global discussion.”

Watch the video of the exhibition here:

Solidarity Now and the Benaki Museum kindly invite you to the Opening of the photo exhibition entitled \”The Journey. People On The Move”, on May 16th at 20:00 , at Pireos street(138 Pireos & Andronikou) The Exhibition will run from the 19th to the 29th of ,with free entrance for the public.

8 Leading Photographers
140 photos
1 Journey from Turkey to Greece for a safe refuge in Europe

Eight renowned photographers–photo reporters in Greece capturing, this past year, the Journey and routes of all the people who were forced to flee their countries.

The exhibition features photos of the photographers:
Yannis Behrakis
Alkis Konstantinidis
Giorgos Moutafis
Angelos Tzortzinis
Enri Canaj
Myrto Papadopoulos
Orestis Seferoglou
Chloe Kritharas – Devienne

“Refugee Highway”, documentary, Chronis Pechlivanidis

Exhibition Opening: May the 16th, 2016 at 20:00 at the Benaki Museum (Pireos building)

Days & Hours of the exhibition:
Thursday and Sunday: 10:00 – 18:00 Friday and Saturday: 10:00 – 22:00

Free Entry. 

Curator: Dora Komninou

Deportations of refugees and migrants from Greece to Turkey must be halted immediately and people wanting to seek asylum should not be kept in detention, said Oxfam, Norwegian Refugee Council and SolidarityNow today in Greece.

Refugees could be returned to Turkey without having had a proper asylum hearing or without receiving the necessary information about their legal rights, the aid agencies warn. Forced returns to Turkey were restarted after a pause last week.

Over 6300 refugees and migrants have arrived on the Greek islands since the EU-Turkey deal came into effect on 20th March, and are being arbitrarily held in detention camps. The majority of these new arrivals have applied for asylum. While the European Commission said on April 4th that Greece had sent 1500 asylum case officers and police officers to the islands, there is no evidence of this additional capacity on the ground.

The Greek Asylum Service remains severely understaffed with only a handful of officials and caseworkers on the island to process cases who are struggling to cope with the demand of asylum requests. Unless the promised additional capacity arrives, the quality of the asylum process will be severely compromised.

Compounding the pressure are new ‘emergency measures’ adopted into law by the Greek Government on April 3rd, which includes an expedited ‘fast track’ asylum hearing to determine admissibility. Under these new procedures, Greek asylum officials must undertake complex asylum examinations, including decisions on whether or not Turkey is considered a safe country for return. These complex reviews that determine a person’s future take place in just one day.

Farah Karimi, Oxfam Executive Director said: “Thousands are being held in squalid detention centers on the Greek Islands – this is the state of Europe in 2016 – while the returns deal was pushed through to the detriment of these stranded suffering people by the EU which claims to be a bastion for human rights. Shame on the EU for prioritizing detention and deportation over people’s rights to safety and dignity.”

Even with the support of this promised extra staff, it will take weeks to process the asylum claims of the more than 6,300 people currently being held in overcrowded detention centers on the Greek islands.

Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland said, “It is shocking to see how Europe is mistreating men, women and children fleeing to our continent for protection from war and persecution. Asylum seekers are kept with migrants in overcrowded detention camps deprived of dignity and basic human rights. Disgraceful conditions are placing people at risk. European politicians hold the keys to this crisis, and should immediately open the camps.”

The aid agencies claim that living conditions in the detention centers are deteriorating rapidly with many people sleeping outdoors or in cramped shelters.
Epaminondas Farmakis, Managing Director of SolidarityNow, said: “Europe can no longer look away from this inhumane situation in which people continue to risk their lives. It must ensure that the people on the move will live in open and secure structures as long as they remain in the country. It is more important, however, to immediately stop deportations to Turkey and to guarantee that these people can exercise their basic right- that of asylum”.
There remains no routine identification of vulnerable people and aid agencies report ongoing detention of children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and those with medical needs. In Lesbos and Chios Pakistanis who perceive their treatment to be discriminatory have threatened to commit suicide.

There is, additionally, growing insecurity as a result of rising frustration and tensions. There have already been incidents of violence at night and women in particular are extremely vulnerable under such circumstances.

Aid agencies are calling on Europe to:
– Immediately halt all returns from Greece to Turkey
– Immediately open all camps where people have expressed intention to seek asylum.
– Immediately improve security to ensure a protective environment for all people inside the closed facility
– Maintain the integrity of the asylum claims process and ensure people have access to legal aid as a matter of urgency
– Increase the number of staff working with the Greek Asylum Service on the islands to process these claims and ensure people are able to access their right to claim asylum before any deportation order is issued.
– Put an end to arbitrary arrests and detentions. The increasing use of detention as a restriction of the freedom of movement of asylum-seekers on the grounds of their irregular entry is a major concern.

In an Action Report we named “e-Report”, we have concentrated the positions of SolidarityNow from 2013 until today.We assess the policy that we follow for our donations to organizations of civil society, which produce important work with social impact and public organizations.

We unfold our philosophy that determines our positions and guides our actions. And simultaneously, we outline the programs that we have developed throughout the social spectrum which ranges from human rights and social justice, to the protection of vulnerable social groups and advocacy on an international and national level.

We present the very positive results that we have achieved through our Solidarity Centers in Athens and Thessaloniki. And the “bet” we won when in 2014, we created specific structures based on the idea of an open space, a nucleus that supports the participation of different groups of civil society in order to cover the lack of access of the city’s most vulnerable populations to integrated services.

We talk about the development of partnerships with civil society organizations and institutions as a fundamental axis of the strategy that we are developing. Our goal is to maximize the result of the joint efforts to relieve the most vulnerable groups affected by the economic and social decline and the refugee crisis.

At SolidarityNow, from 2013 until today, we have financially supported 40 civil society organizations, public institutions and other initiatives with donations exceeding 14 million euros to implement 68 projects .

And we go on.

You can read the e-Report in detail, here.