When will the detention of migrant children in Greece finally end?

This month, to illustrate parts of the administrative kafkaesque nightmare faced by migrants going through the asylum procedures in Greece, we would like to talk about the reality of unaccompanied minors forced to live in Lesvos’ hotspot camp. 

To do so, let us look at the story of Mona (name and identifying details changed), a seven year old child who, despite being accompanied by her grandmother, was detained in the Lesvos CCAC for nearly two months. 

The first time that Mona was allowed to leave the CCAC of Lesvos was nearly six weeks after she arrived with her grandmother and her aunt on the island. She was actually only allowed outside the camp because she had an urgent doctor’s appointment due to a physical disability. Following her appointment she had to return to the camp where she was detained for another two weeks. On her way back to the CCAC, she started crying and struggling with her grandmother, screaming: ‘This is a prison. I don’t want to go back. I feel like a prisoner.’ 

Since Mona did not arrive on Lesvos with her parents, she was automatically considered by the Greek authorities as an unaccompanied minor. Legally speaking, this means that due to her age she should benefit from some special protection from the state and be hosted in a shelter with other children specifically designed for them. However, on Lesvos these shelters can host a maximum of 230 unaccompanied children and they are currently at full capacity (170 children can be hosted in the shelters run by the NGO Iliaktida and 60 in the International Organisation for Migration’s shelters).

What does this mean for the children who do not have a spot in a shelter ? The camp authorities in Lesvos decided to “protect” them by keeping them locked inside the former COVID quarantine zone of the Lesvos CCAC, a fenced off area inside the camp, from where no exit is possible unless accompanied by a legal guardian. The hellish conditions in this prison quarantine area have long been denounced by LCL and other organisations and do not seem to have improved. Children held in this caged area have access to almost no facilities and reported to receive food only once a day. 

Double punishment for these children: they can only leave the fenced area, if accompanied by their legal guardian – that is, the person of reference employed by an NGO to accompany their case. Unfortunately, there are also insufficient numbers of legal guardians in Lesvos and not every unaccompanied minor has been assigned one. As of 3 December 2024, at least 130 migrant children in Lesvos had not been assigned a legal guardian yet, including most of the approximately 43 children who are held inside the fenced off area of the camp. 

Mona, who actually arrived with close family members taking care of her, was still assigned a legal guardian. This situation led to her grandmother having to find a lawyer to get custody of her granddaughter back. Temporary custody can be granted by filing a petition for interim measures with the court. This procedure however took more than eight weeks in the case of Mona. Eight weeks in which the seven-year old was de facto detained inside the CCAC. Mona was ‘luckily’ not held in the prison quarantine area but still prohibited to leave the Lesvos CCAC which served as her prison.

Lesvos has a sordid history of detaining migrant children in horrendous conditions. 

• The migrant detention centre for unaccompanied minors of Pagani was finally shut down in 2009 following exposure of the appalling conditions in which children were being held there and coordinated protests from inside and outside the prison. 
• The notorious Moria camp also detained children in a so-called “safe zone” within the camp, an area in which there were repeated cases of sexual assault, self harm, violence, and general neglect – as detailed in the “Logbook of Horrors” discovered in the safe zone following the fires that destroyed Moria camp in 2020. 

The failure to protect unaccompanied children occurs not just on Lesvos but all over Greece: just a few days ago, on 9 December 2024, a 16-year old boy was tortured and raped in Malakasa camp just outside Athens. It seems that, despite several landmark decisions directly condemning Greece’s treatment of migrants’ children in camps, by the European Committee on Social Rights in 2021 and more recently by the European Court of Human Rights, history is repeating itself with the de facto detention of dozens of children in Lesvos CCAC without any adequate protection nor support. A recent report by the Greek Council for Refugees gives an overview of the toll that this absence of basic rights and isolation from the rest of society takes on children, such as severe depression and other medical issues.
Children should not be forced to live in a camp, let alone be detained. A seven year old child like Mona should not be or feel like a prisoner. Yet, Mona is just one of many cases of unaccompanied children who are held in inhuman and unsafe conditions just because they are migrants. The disgraceful detention of children in Greece’s migrant camps must end.