More than 2,000 unaccompanied children are on the waiting list for safe shelters in Greece, according to this new report by 11 organisations. The chronic shortage of accommodation for children is just one of the gaps in services that is worsening as the Greek Government prepares to take full control of the refugee response.

The Greek government, with the support of European Union leaders, should act now before the onset of winter to end Greece’s “containment policy,” 12 human rights and humanitarian organizations said in a campaign that began today.

(Athens, November 22, 2017) – The Greek government, with the support of EU member states, should act now to end Greece’s “containment policy,” 20 human rights and aid groups said today. The policy forces asylum seekers arriving on the Greek islands to remain in overcrowded, unsafe facilities, an urgent concern with winter approaching.

Starting November 2016 until June 2017, Terre des hommes and the Bulgarian Red Cross succeeded in improving the daily lives of hundreds of children and young people living in three Reception Centres of the State Agency for Refugees in Sofia.

In Macedonia, Terre des hommes, together with its partner Open Gate La Strada, works with children and families who are in transit centres. We provide the affected children with psychosocial support and information. Our mobile teams also organise humanitarian aid in the field and monitor the informal transit places of refugees to help the ones in need.

The purpose of this capacity building package is to build the capacity of those responding to the refugee and migrant crisis to be able to address child protection concerns within the unique settings of the largely transit countries, in particular Croatia, Serbia and the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia (tfYROM).

In the context of the refugee crisis in the Balkan region and the closure of the "Balkan route corridor", the "Making a Difference for Refugee Children in Europe" project aims at supporting refugee children, with a special focus on unaccompanied and separated children (UASC). 

The overall objective is to ensure that foreign children suspected or accused in criminal proceedings benefit from the procedural guarantees they are entitled to  as per directives 2010/64, 2012/13, 2013/48 (right to interpretation and translation, right to information,  and right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings.