IX. Recommendations

To the Ministry of Health and Social Solidarity

Care arrangements for unaccompanied children

• Increase the number of care places to the level required to ensure placements for all unaccompanied children in the country. Establish and enforce minimum standards for all care placements and provide specialized care for unaccompanied girl children and trafficking victims. Set up a foster family system and provide adequate support to foster parents in the exercise of their function. Ensure that care placements provide social, educational, and economic integration and access to legal aid free of charge, and protect children from violence and ill-treatment. Design programs to reach out to unaccompanied children who live outside state-sponsored care to facilitate their access to state protection.

Identification and registration

• In cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and children's guardians, set up a registration and tracking system for unaccompanied children in Greece to account for every child. Investigate incidents of unaccompanied children who abscond from care centers and design strategies to counter such occurrences. 
• Build capacity within the government and among service providers to identify child victims of trafficking; cooperate with the Ministry of Interior to support police officials in correctly identifying trafficking victims and referring them to specialized services and accommodation.

To the Ministry of Justice and Public Prosecutors

The guardianship system

·Revise the current temporary guardianship system for unaccompanied children. Ensure that sufficient numbers of trained guardians are available to carry out their duties for unaccompanied children in a responsible manner and that more emphasis is given to the appointment of permanent rather than temporary guardians.

·Issue binding instructions and provide training for guardians to clarify their mandate and to ensure that the exercise of their duties complies with Greece's civil code and international standards.

To the Ministry of Interior

Identification and access to care and specialized services

·Grant unaccompanied children regular status for as long as they are on Greek territory to ensure their enjoyment of rights and protection on an equal basis with Greek children and to protect them from repeated arrest and detention. Consider the granting of temporary residence for unaccompanied children on humanitarian grounds, as provided for in article 44(c) of Law 3386/2005, until a durable solution in the child's best interests is found.

·In cooperation with the Ministry of Health, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, and specialized NGOs, establish a system to refer these children to care places and facilitate their access to specialized services. Train police officers and other officials to correctly identify unaccompanied children, trafficking victims, or others with special protection needs, and to refer them to services as warranted.

·Adopt formal age determination procedures. These procedures should take a holistic approach and not exclusively rely on medical exams, which are inexact.

Asylum procedures and other forms of protection

·Ensure that all unaccompanied migrant children in Greece are given an opportunity to seek asylum, and are provided representation by a guardian and a lawyer for all unaccompanied children who seek asylum.  Prioritize the determination of asylum applications by unaccompanied children while ensuring a fair and full assessment of their claim. 

·Ensure that qualified interpreters assist communication with asylum-seeking children. Provide unaccompanied children who are illiterate with verbal information about their rights and entitlements in Greece, including their right to seek asylum and facilitate their access to asylum procedure.

·Train asylum interviewers, including interpreters, in conducting child-friendly interviews. Provide training to those who adjudicate asylum applications by children about child-specific forms of persecutions.

Detention and ill-treatment of unaccompanied children

·Make a public commitment to ensure that unaccompanied migrant children apprehended in Greece are treated in a humane and dignified manner. Promptly investigate any allegation of ill-treatment of children by state officials and hold perpetrators fully accountable. Take targeted and comprehensive measures to prevent ill-treatment of migrants, including unaccompanied children, in the custody of state agents. Put in place victim protection mechanisms during investigations and make public statements condemning such acts.

·Stop the practice of routinely detaining children. Detention of unaccompanied children should only be administered as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time possible. Refrain from detaining children jointly with adults. Ensure the separation of both boys and girls from adults in detention and the availability of a confidential complaint mechanism in all detention and confinement settings.

Deportation of unaccompanied children

·Suspend the issuing of deportation orders under existing procedures and halt the deportation of unaccompanied children. Enact procedures that make mandatory a careful and impartial assessment of the child's best interests before a decision is made to return a child. Children who cannot be returned to their country of origin due to legal or other reasons should be allowed to remain in the host country and provided with an opportunity to integrate.

Registry, data, and statistics

·Systematically register and keep track of every unaccompanied child found in Greece. Compile and publish data on unaccompanied children in Greece  with a break-down by age, gender, country of origin, the number of asylum applications filed, and the number of those  granted refugee status or other forms of protection at first and second instance. Publish figures of unaccompanied children returned from Greece, with a breakdown by age, gender, asylum status, country of origin, and the country the child was returned to.

To the Ministry of Labor

·Enhance child labor inspections in the agricultural and construction sectors. Undertake such inspections as part of a comprehensive response with other ministries to address the causes of child labor by unaccompanied children, including the lack of care arrangements, obstacles to access state care and protection, the absence of a regular status for unaccompanied migrant children, and the dysfunctional guardianship system. Ensure that such inspections do not lead to more clandestine forms of child labor, and monitor possible negative effects of such inspections on children who continue to rely on illegal work. Provide all children found working in prohibited forms of labor access to state-funded care as well as rehabilitation and reintegration services.

To the Government as a Whole

Legislative reform

·Revise legislation governing the administrative detention of children. Children, as a general rule should not be detained, unless detention is a proportionate measure of last resort. Ensure that children in detention are represented by a guardian and have access to legal aid free of charge.

·Enact legislation to provide legal assistance free of charge for unaccompanied children in all administrative and judicial proceedings.

·Revise legislation regulating the return of unaccompanied children in accordance with international law and standards. The return of an unaccompanied child to the country of origin should only be carried out if it is a durable solution in the child's best interests, and it must be preceded by an assessment of risks and dangers upon return, the care arrangements available, and the child's exercise of fundamental rights. A decision to return a child should not be made and carried out solely by the police. Instead, the procedure must include oversight by an independent body and independent and competent representation for the child. Repatriation decisions furthermore must respect Greece's obligation under articles 3 and 8 of the European Human Rights Convention, which say that a person may not be returned to a country where he or she faces torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, and that the person's right for family and private life must be respected. 

• Revise Greece's anti-trafficking legislation by broadening the definition of trafficking and expanding the exception clause for child victims. Protection from deportation and access to benefits should not depend on the trafficking victim's consent to cooperate in a criminal investigation against traffickers.

To the European Commission

·Examine the initiation of infringement procedures against Greece for violating its legal obligations to provide appropriate reception conditions for unaccompanied children seeking asylum, and for failing to guarantee minimum standards on procedures for granting and withdrawing refugee status.

·Propose a separate instrument for unaccompanied children who enter the European Union (EU) to ensure the full respect of their rights and special needs from their arrival until the identification of a durable solution. In the meantime, propose strengthening the protection of unaccompanied children in the upcoming revision of asylum directives by ensuring that provisions for unaccompanied children are in line with international law applicable in all EU member states.

·Consider allocating to Greece funding under the Commission's Emergency Fund to increase care placements for unaccompanied children. Make such funding dependent on Greece's commitment to addressing the systemic flaws of its child protection system, providing enhanced services for unaccompanied children, and reforming deportation and detention practices in accordance with international standards. 

·Propose a revision to Council Directive 2004/81/EC to ensure that child victims of trafficking are granted temporary residence irrespective of their agreement to cooperate with authorities in an investigation against presumed traffickers and that they are protected from deportation on the basis of illegal entry.

To the Council of the European Union

·Revise the 2002 Framework Council Decision to ensure that trafficking victims are entitled to protection irrespective of their agreement to cooperate in an investigation against the presumed trafficker.

·Strengthen the protection of unaccompanied children in the upcoming revision of asylum directives by ensuring that provisions for unaccompanied children are in line with international law applicable in all EU member states

To the European Parliament

·Initiate a report investigating protection and assistance for unaccompanied children in Greece, including children's access to asylum procedures. 

·Include more comprehensive guarantees in the upcoming revision of EU asylum instruments in line with recommendations in this report, in order to ensure better protection for unaccompanied children throughout the EU.

To European Union Member States

·Suspend all transfers of unaccompanied children to Greece under the Dublin II regulation until such time as Greece's asylum systems and protection services for unaccompanied children meet international standards. Refrain from summarily returning unaccompanied migrant and asylum seeking children to Greece at ports of entry.

·Extend the application of the reception conditions directive and the procedures directive to all unaccompanied children, whether or not they have made an asylum application, in line with obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To the Council of Europe

To the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT)

·Carry out ad-hoc visits to police lock-ups and places of administrative detention in Greece, including detention facilities under the jurisdiction of border and port police.

To the Parliamentary Assembly

·Follow-up on member states' implementation of Recommendation 1703 on protection and assistance for separated children seeking asylum.

To the Commissioner for Human Rights

·Carry out a visit to Greece to assess Greece's asylum system and the level of protection and care provided for unaccompanied children, including girl children.

To the United Nations

To the United Nations treaty bodies

·Request specific information and scrutinize the practices of the Greek government regarding the level of protection and care for unaccompanied children when Greece reports to a treaty body.

To the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography 

·Carry out a visit to Greece to follow up on Greece's implementation of recommendations issued in 2006.

UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants

·Carry out a visit to Greece to assess the treatment of unaccompanied children and other migrants.