Family law

Greece transferred a dozen unaccompanied children from overcrowded migrant camps to Luxembourg on Wednesday, the first of more than 1,000 relocations that are being expedited amid concerns over the impact of coronavirus on vulnerable groups.

The Migration Ministry submitted its five-point draft bill on migration for public consultation on Friday. The consultation will last until April 24.

The bill provides for speeding up the processing and approval/rejection of asylum applications, the creation of closed controlled structures on the islands, and the legal requirements for the latter's new operating framework.

The resettlement procedure for unaccompanied minors from Greek reception and identification facilities to other European Union states will begin next week. 

The plan foresees that 12 will head to Luxembourg next Wednesday and another 50 to Germany two days later.

A plan is under way to relocate at least 1,600 unaccompanied minors from Greek refugee camps to several European Unon countries, European Commission spokesman Jahnz Adalbert has said.

The relocation was decided on March 6 but has been delayed by the spread of the coronavirus. 

A group of European Union countries has agreed to take in at least 1,600 migrant children in Greece traveling without their parents, with the first unaccompanied minors likely to find homes in Luxembourg as soon as next week, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said Friday.

After Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that Croatia was ready to take in some child refugees trapped in refugee camps on Greek islands, hostile comments on social networks condemned the idea, some claiming that parents and wider relatives would then accompany the children - some of whom might be extremists.

Nineteen organizations have signed an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis calling for the protection of unaccompanied child migrants.
The letter highlighted that these children "are lacking in adequate hospitality structures, but also in a holistic system for child protection."

Nearly 7,000 children were adopted in the last 10 years in Turkey, according to data from the Family, Labor and Social Services Ministry.

But the figure, which was 869 in 2015, dropped to 510 as of November 2019.

Cyprus is preparing new legislation to curb the large number of sham marriages that are being conducted to help individuals obtain residency permits and potentially easier access to the European Union, the country's interior minister said Wednesday.

A woman, identified as M.G., in Turkey's Aegean city of İzmir, left her husband after 11 years of marriage.

"When I found out my husband was cheating on me with another woman, I told him I no longer wanted to live with him. I was a housewife with two children at the time," she told Anadolu Agency, asking to remain anonymous.