Refugee children

A refugee camp in Nea Kavala was quarantined by health authorities on Thursday after a pregnant woman tested positive for Covid-19, according to reports in local media.

Teams from the National Organization for Public Health (EODY), along with the Health Ministry's infectious disease expert Sotiris Tsiodras, are at the camp testing all residents.

Luxembourg has agreed to relocate twelve unaccompanied refugee children from Greece by next week, Alternate Migration and Asylum Minister Giorgos Koumoutsakos said on Tuesday, after a phone call with the country's Foreign Minister, Jean Asselborn.

As he arrived on Thursday for a two-day summit in Brussels to hammer out the European Union's joint seven-year budget, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called for "active solidarity" from the bloc to help Greece deal with migration.

An estimated 5,463 unaccompanied refugee children were living in Greece at the end of January, according to data presented by Deputy Social Affairs Minister Domna Michailidou in Parliament on Thursday.

The data is based on a bi-weekly report compiled by the Labor Ministry's National Center for Social Solidarity (EKKA), with the support from UNICEF.

Turkey has quickly figured out how to use public resources to get more than half a million refugee children enrolled in schools, head of a Turkish charity working on refuge issues said on Jan. 25. 

The mayors representing the four main regions of Crete have agreed to take in dozens of unaccompanied refugee children as part of a government scheme to relocate them from unsuitable facilities on the islands of the eastern Aegean.

A court on Monday on the eastern Aegean island of Samos will hear a case brought by a local parents association against a teacher whom they accuse of encouraging students to ignore the wishes of their parents regarding their opposition to refugee students entering the school.

The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry is seeking ways to improve living conditions for thousands of refugee children staying in Greece without a parent or guardian as they wait to either be granted asylum or reunited with family in other parts of Europe.

Zahra is a 10-year-old girl from Syria who arrived in Greece alone. She suffers from chronic nephropathy. Although she is currently living in a shelter for unaccompanied minors, her official registration by the Asylum Service is still pending.

Almost 12,500 refugee children have attended Greek public schools this year, according to a UNESCO annual report that was presented on Thursday at a special event at the Education Ministry in Athens.
"The total number of registered refugee students at Greek public schools at this moment amounts to around 12,480," said Deputy Education Minister Meropi Tzoufi.