Greece is facing a refugee “children’s emergency” as the number of unaccompanied minors reaching the country rises and concern grows over a lack of “safe zones” to host them.
Large numbers of children arrived in 2024 along a new trafficking route from Libya to Crete, prompting NGOs to urge Greek authorities to take emergency measures that would allow children to be transferred to protected shelters or other EU member states
“What we are seeing amounts to a children’s emergency of the kind that we haven’t witnessed in years,” said Sofia Kouvelaki, who heads the Home Project, an organisation that supports refugee and migrant children in Athens.
Ten years after Greece was at the centre of a refugee crisis when nearly a million EU-bound asylum seekers crossed its borders, child arrivals to Greece more than doubled year on year in 2024, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. More than 13,000 minors arrived in the country by sea in the first 11 months of 2024. Landings by unaccompanied and separated children have also risen sharply, from 1,490 in 2023 to approximately 3,000 so far this year.
“There are a huge number of kids turning up on boats every day and an urgent need for the creation of more safe spaces to house them,” Kouvelaki said.
Recent arrivals referred to the Home Project included exceptionally young children from Syria and Egypt, she added.
Greece’s migration minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, predicted last week that pressure on eastern Mediterranean migration routes to Europe’s southernmost border state was likely to continue in 2025.
“The extensive geopolitical unrest in our broader region, where three wars are waging, the most recent in Syria, combined with the climate crisis, is forcing many to abandon their homes simply to survive,” he told parliament. “All these factors have led to a significant increase in migration and refugee flows since late 2023.”
By the end of the year, 60,000 people are expected to have entered Greece. The rise in numbers has been such that camps on Aegean islands are at full capacity, Panagiotopoulos said.
As Christmas approaches, hundreds of children were reported by aid groups to be on the frontline isles of Samos, Leros and Kos without clothes or shoes and little or no access to essential services.
Cuts by Greece’s centre-right government, which has adopted what it has described as a “strict but fair” migration policy, has resulted in fewer protective shelters. An estimated 1,500 unaccompanied minors nationwide been forced to fend for themselves.
Incidents of violence and abuse have proliferated in overcrowded state-run reception facilities that frequently host children and adults together.
This month, authorities were put on the defensive when it emerged that an Egyptian teenager had been gang-raped, beaten and burned by at least four people, including two adults, after an altercation over a mobile phone. The attack at the Malakasa refugee camp outside Athens prompted outrage. Officials said plans were under way to create an extra 500 places for children in sheltered environments “once financing was found”.
“We’re all shocked by this incident,” said the deputy migration minister, Sofia Voultepsi, noting that of the 213 boys in the camp, 160 were from Egypt and allegedly “displayed intense signs of delinquency”.
“Unfortunately, traffickers go to the poorest villages of Egypt, they convince parents to send the children to Europe to work, with the aim of sending them money, and then they transport them to Libya and from there to [the port city] Tobruk,” she told the state broadcaster ERT. “There they put them in a huge camp and torture them and prepare and familiarise them in organised crime.”
Greek officials say arrivals from Tobruk have risen by 400% this year.
Aid organisations, including Save the Children, also cite critical failures in Greece’s reception system. Overcrowding in camps and asylum seeker facilities have, they say, been exacerbated by shortages in basic services including interpreters and guardians, which had placed children at risk as their asylum requests were invariably put on hold. 2024 had been noticeable for EU funds being “hugely delayed” in reaching shelters, migrant solidarity workers said.
The government recently announced that an agreement has been struck to “finally” resolve the lack of interpreters.
“When a part of the system malfunctions everything malfunctions,” said Lefteris Papagiannakis, the director of the Greek Council for Refugees.
Last week, the council released a scathing report, co-authored with Save the Children, into the “alarming” living conditions minors continue to face in the country’s camps. “It is unacceptable that, even now, when so much money has been invested in Greece and we are no longer in crisis mode, that we should be discussing such basic issues.”
NGOs have urged Greek authorities to prioritise the early integration of children seeking asylum and called for child-protection measures to be urgently enforced.
“Children fleeing humanitarian crises arrive in Greece hoping for safety but find themselves trapped in yet another crisis,” said Willy Bergogne, Europe director at Save the Children. “Reception centres meant to shelter them have been places of fear and isolation, with violence, alarming living conditions and a lack of support services.”
It was, he added, incumbent on officials to act immediately. “The EU and Greek authorities have a moral and legal obligation to act urgently to improve the conditions in these camps and protect these children.”
