Increased flow of unaccompanied refugee children observed
There are estimated to be 1000 in number, who are staying in reception facilities on the islands and in the Reception and Identification Centres (RIC) on the mainland, in Malakasa and Diavata. In fact, the Diavata RIC received the first 61 unaccompanied children this week.
As the General Secretary of Vulnerable Citizens and Institutional Protection, Iraklis Moskof, said to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA), in recent months there has been an increased flow of unaccompanied children, mainly from Egypt and Libya, who arrive in areas where there are no Reception and Identification Centres, such as Crete, Rhodes and small islands.
"Because the "safe areas" we have at the RICs are overcrowded, until the registration, psychosocial and medical procedures are completed, and we can transfer them to the mainland, it is taking considerably longer than we would like," he added.
According to Moskof, the facilities for unaccompanied minors are overcrowded and the solutions initiated include the creation of more "safe areas" in the mainland RICs, namely in Malakasa, where it has been operating for months, and in Diavata, which started operating a few days ago with the first transfer of children from Malakasa. "However, in the next period we are opening three more 'safe areas' with a capacity of 80 people each," he added.
Moskof announced that, in the coming months, another 500 new accommodation places will be created in the facilities the Secretariat is responsible for, which already have 1,600 places, while it has asked the European Commission to re-activate "relocation" mechanisms for the relocation of children to countries of Europe. “ This existed and we had relocated 1500 children in previous years. The programme has ended and I have now asked for it to be resumed so that Europe can show its solidarity by taking some children as well," he concluded.
Responding to the need to create emergency accommodation places, the ARSIS-Social youth support organisation, a non-governmental organisation, undertook to create the "safe area" in Diavata in collaboration with the National Emergency Response Mechanism of the General Secretariat of Vulnerable Citizens and Institutional Protection.
AMNA
