II. Recommendations

To the Government of Greece

•Make a public commitment to ensure that migrants apprehended in Greek territory or at the border-whether on land or at sea-are treated in a humane and dignified manner, are given the opportunity to seek asylum if they so choose, and are not subjected to refoulement.

•Prosecute police and coast guard officials who abuse their authority by beating, robbing, and summarily expelling migrants.

•Immediately stop the routine and systematic police practice of gathering migrants in police stations in the Evros region, trucking them to the Evros River, and sending them across the border secretly in small boats.  Levy appropriate punishments against those officials involved directly and through command responsibility for illegal acts involving summary expulsions.

•Investigate allegations in this and other reports that Hellenic Coast Guard personnel are involved in the practice of puncturing inflatable boats and setting them adrift, as well as other acts of abuse that put the lives and safety of migrants at risk.  Prosecute any guardsmen engaged in such illegal acts, as well as their commanding officers.

•Establish a system for adjudicating asylum claims that is independent of the police (the Secretariat General for Public Order within the Ministry of Interior) and that meets international procedural standards for determining refugee status.

•Provide access to asylum procedures at the border, in the border region, and on the islands; make the asylum booklet widely available in police stations and detention centers; allow independent lawyers and nongovernmental social service providers access to detained migrants; provide resources for interpreters to assist in identifying asylum seekers in these outlying areas and in conducting asylum interviews; and allow asylum seekers to remain in these areas, if they so choose, for the duration of the asylum process, including appeals.

•Reserve the accelerated procedure for cases that do, in fact, appear clearly to be manifestly unfounded, such as those that would fit the criteria for "manifestly unfounded" set out in UNHCR Executive Committee Conclusion 30. Greek asylum practices should be changed so that people who apply for asylum at borders, transit zones or ports, and airports are not automatically placed in the accelerated procedure and likewise that people who do not file an application for asylum as soon as possible are not also deemed to be manifestly unfounded, and, therefore also placed in the accelerated procedure. 

•Reform the appeals committee so that it operates transparently through published decisions and is not housed in the Secretariat General for Public Order.  Ensure that it maintains sufficient staffing and resources to fairly consider new cases before it, as well as the existing backlog of cases.

•Provide an efficient and dignified way for asylum seekers to lodge asylum claims in Athens.  Allow any asylum seekers who appear at a port of entry, transit zone, or police station anywhere in the country at any time to submit an asylum application and in doing so to receive a receipt with an appointment date for a first-instance asylum hearing and papers that entitle them to stay in Greece until they are issued a red card (the standard document for asylum seekers).

•Provide asylum seekers access to legal representation, funded through public funds.

•As a matter or priority, train asylum interviewers and decision-makers on subsidiary protection for people fleeing indiscriminate violence arising from armed conflict or from torture or inhuman and degrading treatment (introduced into Greek law in July 2008).

•Take note of UNHCR's recommendation that all states consider asylum seekers from central and southern Iraq as refugees based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, and that those who are not so recognized should be afforded subsidiary protection.  

•Provide an efficient and dignified way for asylum seekers holding a red card to renew their cards in six-month intervals.

•Avoid the detention of asylum seekers and, consistent with international standards, resort to detention only when necessary and on grounds prescribed by law; when detaining asylum seekers, comply with Presidential decree 90/2008 Article 13.2 that "the time period of confinement [for an asylum seeker] shall in no case exceed sixty (60) days." Provide a means for detainees to challenge their detention and to seek provisional release.

•Close the Mitilini, Peplos, and Venna detention facilities and open new facilities, as needed, modeled on the new detention facility on Samos.  Ensure the adequate space, privacy, cleanliness, recreation, access to health care and legal and family visitation necessary for humane conditions of detention.

•Stop the administrative detention of non-criminal foreigners in police stations and other common law enforcement detention facilities.

•Build additional open accommodation centers to house destitute asylum seekers in need of shelter and humanitarian support.

•Provide suitable accommodation-not detention-for particularly vulnerable asylum seekers, including survivors of torture and victims of trafficking.

•Immediately stop the practice of routinely detaining unaccompanied children. Detention of unaccompanied children should only be administered as a measure of last resort, for the shortest time possible and only if it is in the child's best interests. Immediately increase the number of care places for unaccompanied children and ensure sufficient places are available to provide accommodation for all unaccompanied children in Greece. Provide specialized care arrangements for unaccompanied girl children.

•Support the social integration of refugees and other protection beneficiaries by promoting Greek language instruction, access to health care, education and professional training, and the job and housing markets.

•Suspend the readmission agreement with Turkey until Turkey complies with minimal standards for the detention of migrants and provides a meaningful opportunity for returnees to seek protection and not to be summarily returned to Iraq or Iran.

•To avoid repeat detentions, harassment, and summary removals, ensure that non-nationals can only be deported if there exists a lawful deportation order which has been issued following full due process and the exhaustion of legal remedies, after voluntary repatriation has been offered, and if no other protection need or other legal or humanitarian basis for staying in Greece has been found. Deportations carried out on this basis must be done so in an orderly, dignified, and humane manner.

•Enlist the help of the International Organization for Migration to assist in the voluntary return of migrants who do not have a protection need and want to return to their home countries.

•Provide the UN High Commissioner for Refugees full access to all migration detention facilities, Coast Guard vessels and facilities, and to entry and border points and the border region.

•Act with greater transparency with respect to nongovernmental human rights monitors by acceding to reasonable requests from reputable NGOs for access to monitor conditions of detention, including by permitting them to conduct private interviews with detainees.

To the Government of Turkey

•Immediately stop deporting busloads of Iraqis apprehended at the Greek border to Iraq.

•Immediately close the Tunca detention facility at Edirne.  Until a proper facility can be built, temporarily transfer all detainees in Tunca who cannot be released or deported to the Gaziosmanpaşa Refugee Camp at Kırklareli.

•Investigate allegations of abuse by gendarmes at the border and by guards at the Tunca facility and prosecute those responsible for abusing migrants and detainees.

•Build a proper detention facility at Edirne to meet the needs for administrative-not punitive-detention of undocumented or improperly documented migrants.

•Provide financial support to the relevant police authorities in Edirne commensurate with the numbers of migrants apprehended and detained there so that the detention facility is adequately staffed-including with health-care professionals on site-and is able to provide for the nutritional, sanitary, recreational, and health needs of detainees.

•Avoid the detention of asylum seekers and, consistent with international standards, resort to detention only when necessary and on grounds prescribed by law. Provide a means for detainees to challenge their detention and to seek provisional release.

•Set time limits (we suggest two months) on the administrative detention of migrants who are being held pending their removal from Turkey.

•Cease the practice of holding migrants in indefinite detention until such time as their families are able to pay for their return tickets.

•To avoid indefinite detention, harassment, and summary removals, ensure that non-nationals can only be deported if there exists a lawful deportation order which has been issued following full due process and the exhaustion of legal remedies, after voluntary repatriation has been offered, and if no other protection need or other legal or humanitarian basis for staying in Turkey has been found. Deportations carried out on this basis must be done so in an orderly, dignified, and humane manner.

•Enlist the help of the International Organization for Migration to assist in the voluntary return of migrants who do not have a protection need and want to return to their home countries.

•Provide the UN High Commissioner for Refugees full access to all migration detention facilities and to the Meriç River border region.

•Lift Turkey's geographic limitation to the 1951 Refugee Convention so that Iraqi, Iranian, and other non-European refugees will be fully recognized and protected equally with European refugees.

•Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, and implement the Protocol through the creation of an independent national body to carry out regular and ad hoc unannounced visits to all places of detention.

•Prior to ratification, urgently take steps to permit independent visiting of places of detention by representatives of NGOs, lawyers, medical professionals, and members of local bar associations.

To the European Union and Its Member States

•Suspend the transfer of asylum seekers to Greece under the Dublin II regulation because the Greek authorities prevent access to asylum procedures for persons returned to Greece, because its detention conditions, police conduct, and asylum procedures are not, in fact, in conformity with EU standards, even if its laws are formally compliant with EU directives, and because it systematically commits refoulement by summarily and forcibly returning third-country nationals to Turkey where they face a real risk of being subjected to inhuman and degrading conditions of detention and where two nationalities, Iraqis and Iranians, are subjected to onward deportation to their respective countries of origin with inadequate opportunity to seek protection.

•Ensure that all EU states fully implement the minimal standards of the EC directives on reception conditions for asylum seekers, asylum procedures, and the qualification for refugee status and other forms of protection.  

•Reform the Dublin system by having the Dublin regulation take into account equitable burden-sharing among member countries that genuinely have common asylum standards and procedures by, for example, consideration of joint EU processing within the EU of specific caseloads.  The operating principles of the Dublin system should also be reformed by according greater weight to the variety of factors that might connect an asylum applicant to one state over another. Such connections go beyond the qualifying family relationships in the Dublin II regulation to include wider family relations, community ties, prior residence, language, job skills that might be in demand in one country over another, and the personal preference of the applicant, a legitimate factor to consider.  A reformed Dublin system should accord less weight than under the current regulation to the country of first arrival in assessing the state responsible for examining asylum claims.

•Establish a refugee resettlement program in cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that sets quotas for all EU member states based on their capacity to accommodate refugees as a means both of expressing international solidarity and of providing a safe and legal mechanisms for refugees in need of resettlement to avail themselves of protection, family reunification, and durable solutions in Europe. Such a refugee program should be regarded as complementing a common European asylum system and not as a substitute for providing protection to asylum seekers within the EU.

To the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

•Continue to advise EU member states not to transfer asylum seekers to Greece under the Dublin II regulation until that country demonstrates its ability to give asylum seekers fair hearings on the merits of their claims, as well as reception, detention, and removal procedures that are on a par with EU standards and the practices of other EU member states.

•Assign at least one full-time protection officer for the Greek-Turkish border/Aegean Sea region to better identify and protect people in need of international protection in the mixed migration stream in the Turkish-Greek border area.

•Establish a sub-office at Edirne in Turkey.

To the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights and Committee for the Prevention of Torture

•Increase the number and frequency of visits to Greek immigration detention centers, particularly during anticipated periods of overcrowding, and conduct visits to immigration detention centers in Turkey. 

To the International Organization for Migration

• Seek funding to be able to offer more assistance for undocumented third country nationals who wish to return to their home countries from Greece and Turkey to help them to voluntarily repatriate and reintegrate into their home economies. Repatriation assistance should be strictly reserved for people who have no need for international protection; it should be completely voluntary and only to places that allow for safe, dignified, and sustainable return.