More than 240 refugees and migrants have tested positive for Covid-19 in the newly erected Kara Tepe camp on Lesvos. The new camp, which was constructed after a fire levelled Moria camp, is built on a former military firing range near the main town of Mytilene. In the wake of the Moria fire, more than […]
Greece
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
On 9 September 2020, a few days after several people in Lesvos’ Moria Camp tested positive for Covid-19, fires broke out that destroyed the camp, leaving some 13,000 people without shelter and resulting in a major humanitarian crisis. It is unclear how the fires began but according to Greece’s migration minister, the fires “began with […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
Greek authorities reported the first confirmed Covid-19 case in Lesvos’ overcrowded Moria Camp. In response, the country’s ministries for asylum, health, and civil protection announced in a joint statement that the camp would be closed for 14 days, and that authorities were actively tracing and testing all persons who had come into contact with the […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
Responding to the Global Detention Project’s Covid-19 survey, an official from an international organisation said that in Greece no moratorium on new immigration detention orders had been established but that new arrests and detention orders were reduced beginning from late March to mid-May. Since the end of May, the issuing of detention orders has gradually […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
Despite repeated criticisms of its continued lockdown of refugee and migrant camps (see 18 June update), Greece recently announced its fifth extension of these lockdown measures. As of 4 July, camps are to be quarantined until 19 July, with migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers continuing to face movement restrictions. According to the country’s migration ministry, […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
Although Greece lifted its lockdown measures in May, authorities have continued to impose movement restrictions upon migrants and refugees held in Reception and Identification Centres (RICs) on the Aegean islands as well as facilities on the country’s mainland. Initially extended until 10 May, lockdown measures for such facilities were later extended until 7 June—and now […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
Nearly 42,000 refugees remain in overcrowded detention camps as the Covid-19 pandemic spreads, with refugees lacking access to essential items and services, such as soap and water as well as basic health care. Despite calls from civil society and the European Commission to release detainees into adequate alternatives and after several detainees tested positive, the […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
On 15 April Greece began relocating to Luxembourg unaccompanied children from camps on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, and Chios, which are severely overcrowded. There are reportedly some 5,000 unaccompanied children in Greek camps, and the country has plans “to relocate about 1,600 vulnerable children to other European countries that volunteer to host them, amid […]
Greece: Covid-19 and Detention
In mid-March, Greece announced that its plans to transform the hotspots on Leros and Kos into closed reception centres would be accelerated and that all visits to hotspots would be suspended in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, national and international organisations subsequently issued urgent calls to reduce overcrowding in hotspots, including Médecins Sans Frontières […]
Physical Fences and Digital Divides: Final Report of the Global Detention Project Special Investigation into the Uses of Electronic Media in Today’s Migration Journeys
The “refugee crisis” helped spur a “tech turn” in how people travel across borders and how governments and others respond to these movements. Everyone from civil society organisations—including the Global Detention Project—and individual activists to humanitarian technologists, government officials, and international bureaucrats have experimented with social media and other new forms of digital technology to […]
