A group of 19 civil society organizations, including Oxfam, Hellenic League of Human Rights and Danish Refugee Council, expressed concern on Thursday over deteriorating humanitarian situation at overcrowded refugee reception centers on the Greek islands.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th September, 2018) A group of 19 civil society organizations, including Oxfam, Hellenic League of Human Rights and Danish Refugee Council, expressed concern on Thursday over deteriorating humanitarian situation at overcrowded refugee reception centers on the Greek islands.
"Over 17,000 people remain crammed in Greek island reception centers with a total capacity for only 6,000, living in desperate conditions which do not meet humanitarian standards. This, despite public assurances from the Greek Minister of Migration Policy, Dimitris Vitsas, that the islands would be decongested by September and that thousands of new places would be created on the Greek mainland," a joint statement read.
The NGOs urged the Greek authorities to take immediate action to enhance reception conditions for refugees.
Greece is one of the EU states that has been at the forefront of the bloc's migration crisis, struggling to deal with the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to the continent from the middle East and North Africa.
The UN Refugee Agency said in late August that the Reception and Identification Centers (RICs) for asylum seekers and migrants in Greece were extremely overcrowded, citing severe overpopulation in Moria center on the island of Lesbos, where over 7,000 people, around a quarter of whom are children, live in shelters that can collectively accommodate only 2,000 people.
