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.
 

Following yesterday’s fire in Moria, on Lesvos, which destroyed the Reception and Identification Centre, 30 civil society organizations call on the Greek Government to immediately provide assistance to people who lost their shelter. Those affected, among them many children and at-risk groups, must be carefully transferred to safety on the mainland. 

Terre des hommes (Tdh) and its partners developed three online courses focusing on protecting migrant and refugee children and their families.

We, the undersigned organizations, jointly call on European governments to proceed immediately with the emergency relocation of unaccompanied children from the Reception and Identification Centres (RICs) on the Greek islands, with no discrimination, giving precedence to existing family links and the best interests of the child.

Recalling the letter issued on 6 March 2020, signed by more than 250 organizations throughout Europe, the undersigned organizations reiterate the dangers stemming from persisting in current arrangements on the management of the reception of asylum seekers and the respect for their right to seek asylum in Greece.