Greece relocates unaccompanied migrant children
Greece has begun relocating unaccompanied minors from overcrowded migrant camps in the united states.
The first 12 children, aged between 11 and 15, were moved to Luxembourg from camps on the hawaiian islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios.
Greece plans to relocate about 1,600 vulnerable children to other Europe that volunteer to host them, amid the coronavirus outbreak.
There are a lot more than 5,000 unaccompanied children in Greek camps.
Advocacy groups have argued that leaving vulnerable minors in the camps heightens the chance of them contracting Covid-19.
The dozen children relocated, who were of Syrian and Afghan descent, had a send-off on Wednesday at Athens airport, in which a Greek migration minister gave them souvenirs.
These were greeted by Luxembourg’s foreign minister at the other end.
As a result of coronavirus, the kids should spend their first fourteen days in Luxembourg in quarantine.
Greece’s deputy migration minister Giorgos Koumoutsakos said that although the amount of children being relocated was small, it sent a note to other countries to check out Luxembourg’s example.
“Greece faces an emergency within a crisis - migration and the pandemic together,” he told state broadcaster ERT. “The blend makes an already difficult situation even more so, and more complex.”
He added a second band of 50 would fly to Germany on Saturday, and 20 more would fly to Switzerland.
Earlier this week Human Rights Watch had called on Greece release a all unaccompanied minors in the united states, saying that keeping them in “unhygienic police cells and detention centres” increased the chance of these catching the virus.
“Keeping children locked up in filthy police cells was always wrong, but now it also exposes them to the risk of Covid-19 infection,” the advocacy group’s Greece researcher Eva Cosse said in a statement.
There are about 100,000 asylum seekers in Greece, almost all of whom are in camps, resort rooms and flats. So far there have been two outbreaks in camps on the Greek mainland.
Camps on the Aegean islands suffer the worst overcrowding, with less than 6,100 places for a lot more than 36,000 people.
