In Greece, Unaccompanied Minor Refugees Fall Through Service Gaps

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In Greece, Unaccompanied Minor Refugees Fall Through Service Gaps

Author: Divya Mishra | pulitzercenter.org | 17 February 2019

In a fly-infested kitchen at the Thiva refugee camp about 50 miles from Athens, Greece, 16-year-old Fayaz slices up watermelon for a snack. Tall with prominent front teeth and wearing a faded pink t-shirt, he lives in a white, trailer-like box that camp residents call containers. 

Originally a textile mill, the remote facility was converted two years ago into a camp, which now houses about 800 refugees. Many of them came to Greece during the height of the European refugee crisis in 2015 and early 2016. 

The influx of more than a million people strained Greece’s refugee and migrant facilities beyond the breaking point. Arrivals were held on Greek islands in overcrowded and squalid camps known as reception and identification centers, or RICs. 

Fayaz was 12 when he left his home in Afghanistan in 2014 to escape a turbulent combination of family instability and political violence. Traveling through the same illegal immigration networks that Afghans have used for 30 years, Fayaz arrived in Turkey. There, he got a job working 14 hours a day in an electronics factory. Read more>>>

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