Greece urged to act over ‘shameful’ migrant camps

Non Governmental Organisations on Thursday urged Greece to take urgent action over the ‘shameful’ migrant camps, where 17,000 people are crammed in conditions unfit for human habitation.

On Monday, the governor of the north Aegean region said the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece’s biggest, faced closure in October unless authorities cleaned up uncontrollable amounts of waste.

More than 8,300 refugees and migrants are in the former military camp, housed in shipping containers and flimsy tents in conditions widely criticised as falling short of basic standards.

The 19 civil society organisations, which included Oxfam and Action Aid, called conditions at Moria “shameful”, but said the same applied to other island camps.

“There is no excuse for the … conditions in which thousands of people remain trapped in limbo while they wait out their asylum claims,” the NGOs said.

“Moria … is currently housing almost three times its capacity. The sewage system does not work and filthy toilet water reaches the tents and mattresses where children sleep.”

In August the UNHCR urged Greece to speed up transfers of eligible asylum-seekers from Aegean islands to the mainland, noting that conditions at Moria were “reaching boiling point”.

Greece has moved asylum seekers to the mainland in recent months and is looking to speed up efforts to reduce numbers at the camps.

Lesbos, not far from Turkey, was the preferred entry point into the European Union in 2015 for nearly a million Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis. Small numbers of boats continue to arrive there.