Eva Cosse

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday urged Greek authorities to release 276 unaccompanied migrant children detained in police cells and detention centers across the country, saying the move was all the more urgent due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Greece should scrap a draft law that threatens to restrict access to protection for asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.

Athens is currently struggling with the biggest resurgence in refugee arrivals since 2015, when more than a million people crossed into Europe from Turkey via Greece.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Greece's newly-elected Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to take action to end abuses against unaccompanied migrant children, other asylum seekers and migrants, and children with disabilities.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the Greek government to end the "containment" of asylum seekers in island camps.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday urged the Greek government to speed up transfers from refugee and migrant camps on the Aegean islands to the mainland, warning that overcrowded facilities on Lesvos, Chios, Leros, Samos and Kos were ill-equipped to deal with the coming of winter.

Representatives of Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday challenged the government in Parliament over conditions at the Moria migrant camp on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos.

More unaccompanied young refugees and migrants are ending up detained in unsafe conditions, according to the National Center for Social Solidarity (EKKA), which found 117 detained at police centers. EKKA says the number stood at just two in November 2016.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticized Greek authorities for mishandling the registration and housing of unaccompanied refugees under the age of 18 on Lesvos.

According to a statement released on Wednesday by HRW, which spoke to 20 refugee children on the eastern Aegean island, unaccompanied minors as young as 15 have been wrongly registered as adults.

Human Rights Watch report refers to Greece’s share of responsibility on dealing with the huge flows of refugees, but it also stresses the responsibilities of all EU countries underlining that the solution is not to place Greece in quarantine.

The organization makes a plea not to “quarantine Greece and to prevent the onward movement of asylum seekers put their rights at risk”.

Doha-based news agency Al Jazeera focuses on the lives of female refugees and documents their plight as they embark upon the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece. One of the case studies is that of Samira who traveled from Ahir, Morocco, to Lesbos.