A halt to cash assistance for asylum seekers, and the denial of food support to recognised refugees and rejected asylum seekers is creating a hunger crisis in Greece, 27 NGOs and civil society organisations warn today.

This briefing paper, based on the organizations' experiences both in Greece and in destination countries, offers their perspective on how to improve the process and outcomes for those being relocated, particularly for unaccompanied children.

The Greek government should immediately disburse belated payments of cash assistance and ensure food provision to people living in facilities (e.g. camps and ESTIA apartments), irrespective of their legal status. Depriving them of this basic human right is shameful and a violation of fundamental human rights.  

We call on the Greek and European authorities to honour their responsibility to protect refugees and to avoid further undermining the European asylum acquis and the fundamental principles and values for protecting human rights. To this end, we call on Greece to revoke the JMD issued on 7 June.

This policy brief outlines the most worrying potential impacts of the proposed Screening Regulation in relation to the protection of asylum seekers, among them unaccompanied children and children and families and their rights. Drawing on experience from the signatories' collective work in Greece, including Terre des hommes Hellas, and the testimonies of asylum-seekers they have worked with, it also provides recommendations for amending the current proposal.

Refugee and asylum-seeking children and families in Greece face multiple challenges such as unsafe living conditions and limited access to services and education. Together with DRC Greece and IOM Greece, Terre des hommes (Tdh) improves the protective environment of families in eights camps in mainland Greece.

As winter closes in, thousands of refugees in Greece still face homelessness and destitution. While winter always poses a challenge, this year is likely to become one of the most challenging yet due to the ongoing pandemic, a deliberate decrease in the length of support for refugees, and the lack of a comprehensive integration strategy and strategy against homelessness from authorities. 

Terre des hommes is concerned about the situation of migrant children and young people from non-European countries, asylum seekers or beneficiaries of a form of international protection in Romania. Tdh developed the advocacy paper "Access to education for migrant children and youth in Romania" with recommendations to the agencies responsible for the integration of migrants in the Romanian society.

At these exceptional times marked by a global pandemic, the Initiative for Child Rights in the Global
Compacts (the Initiative) has put together a collection of practices from its members, to support
governments to better protect and support refugee children by putting the Global Compact on
Refugees (GCR) into practice with children at its heart.

Members of Greece's parliament should urgently establish an inquiry into all allegations of unlawful returns of migrants to Turkey by law enforcement officers and others, 29 human rights and humanitarian aid organizations said in an open letter released today. These returns are carried out mainly through pushbacks and collective expulsions and are often accompanied by violence.