Alwaght- Refugee camps in Greece do not meet international standards despite Greek officials' impressive measures, the rapporteur for the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons said on Monday.
"I am impressed by what the Greek authorities have done in such a short space of time to create new facilities for the people from Idomeni. However, this has been a missed opportunity to create decent facilities that meet international standards," Dutch parliamentarian Tineke Strik Strik said after she visited refugee camps in Thessaloniki to which refugees and migrants have been transferred from Idomeni, near the Macedonian border.
"In the places that I visited, there was no privacy, no fire safety, no light and no ventilation and people have no information on their situation or their prospects. Many of these people are hoping to be reunited with family members already in other European countries. Their psychological well-being will depend on the rapid completion of the pre-registration process and the ability to exercise their right to apply for asylum," the European official added.
Since last Tuesday, when a relocation operation in Greece started, more than 4,000 people have been transferred to new facilities, according to the Greek police
Idomeni has been the country's largest informal refugee camp in northern Greece, which lies on the border with Macedonia. Stranded asylum seekers had been gathering there for months, reaching more than 13,000 people at its peak, including hundreds of children.
Over one million migrants entered Greece since 2015 after foreign-backed terrorists launched their brutal war on west Asian Arab Countries of Syria and Iraq. More than 50,000 people have remained in the country due to border restrictions applied by
