Unaccompanied minors on the Greek island of Lesbos are being incorrectly identified as adults and housed with unrelated adults, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and unable to access the specific care they need and are entitled to, Human Rights Watch says in a statement. This is mainly due to flawed age assessment procedures but also because some children claim to be adults, believing it will allow them to avoid detention.

When they realise they have made a mistake and try to persuade the authorities to register them correctly, they can spend months trying to change their official status and being treated as adults in the meantime, sometimes until they reach adulthood. Despite an assurance by Greek officials to Human Rights Watch that a proper multidisciplinary procedure is followed, reception service officials do not systematically question unaccompanied children who claim to be adults, even when their appearance strongly suggests that they are well under 18.

In practice, authorities fail to provide children with adequate information about their rights during the reception and identification process on the islands and take no steps to verify whether an individual claiming to be an adult is a child, creating a risk that trafficked children will not be identified and protected from further harm.

Eva Cossé, Greece researcher at Human Rights Watch says “Greek authorities need to take responsibility for properly identifying unaccompanied children and providing them the protection and care every child needs.” Greece need to resolve its chronic shortage of space in safe accommodation for registered unaccompanied children and stop detaining them at police stations for example while pending placement in a shelter to be line with international best practices. On 20 June 2017, 1,149 were on the waiting list for shelter. 296 of them detained. Read more 

Greek authorities should take steps to better identify children, give those whose age is disputed the benefit of the doubt in close cases, and ensure that they have access to decent accommodation where they can receive care, education, counselling, legal aid, guardianship, and other essential services, the organisation says.

Human Rights Watch statement