About This Report
No Refuge
November 2, 2009

Recommendations

Human Rights Watch urges the new Greek government to undertake the following immediate steps:

  • Publicly set out the concrete measures that the new government will take 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.
  • Firmly guarantee that all migrants are given a meaningful opportunity to seek asylum, and are not at risk of removal that would expose them to persecution, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment (refoulement).
  • Rescind Presidential Decree 81/2009. Instead, create an asylum system that works, starting with initial interviews that can actually result in identifying people in need of protection, and with a prompt and fair appeal of negative decisions. This requires Greece to create:
    • a corps of specially trained officials and competent interpreters, including specialists in interviewing children, who will be able to conduct careful, private interviews; and
    • an independent court or tribunal to work full-time to consider appeals in a fair and timely way.
  • Immediately stop the practice of trucking migrants to the Evros River at night and sending them across the border secretly in small boats.
  • Close Venna and other substandard detention facility facilities, and open new facilities, as needed, with adequate space, privacy, cleanliness, recreation, access to the health care and legal and family visitation necessary for humane conditions of detention.
  • Ensure that non-nationals may be deported only under a lawful deportation order issued following full due process, including the right to an appeal before a court or tribunal, and the exhaustion of all other 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.
  • Suspend the deportation of unaccompanied migrant children and enact new procedures that make mandatory a careful and impartial assessment of the child’s best interests before a decision is made to return a child.
  • Ensure full access for the UN refugee agency and relevant organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, to all migration detention facilities, Coast Guard vessels and facilities, and the border region, including entry points.