(Athens) – The Greek government should urgently reform its discriminatory policies so that asylum-seeking children can go to school when the new year begins on September 13, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. Only one in seven children living in camps was able to attend school in the last school year, and authorities should immediately hire teachers, organize school transportation and lift measures that prevent asylum-seeking children from go to school under the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic. 19 pandemic.
that of Greece failure to respect the right to education of asylum-seeking children constitutes a violation EU directives, which require all EU member states to integrate asylum-seeking children into their national school systems within three months of their identification, Human Rights Watch said. The European Commission, which has devoted billions of euros to “migration management”, notably to education in Greece, regularly takes measures against EU member states that do not respect their obligations under EU law and should seek to force Greece to end its non-compliant and discriminatory policies.
“The Greek government must improve access to education for refugee children before the start of the coming school year,” said Bill Van Esveld, deputy director of children’s rights at Human Rights Watch. “The European Commission should demand better results and protect the rights and futures of thousands of children. »
Human Rights Watch spoke with 9 families with 20 school-aged children living in camps on the mainland, 2 Ministry of Education staff working in camps, and 8 humanitarian staff working in camps on the mainland and in the Aegean islands and reviewed numerous documents and reports on the situation. .
In a January decision that was only made public on July 12, the European Committee of Social Rights, the Council of Europe body which monitors and judges compliance with the European Social Charter, detained that Greece is violating the rights of children seeking asylum, including the right to education of children on the Greek islands where new arrivals from Turkey are held. Greece has not put in place the “immediate measures” to “guarantee access to education” that the Committee had deemed necessary in May 2019, the decision said.
More than 10,400 school-age children seeking asylum in Greece live in camps on the mainland and Aegean islands, but 86% of them were out of school at the start of 2021, according to the Greek Ombudsman for the rights of the child. reported in April. In the island camps, only 7 of the 2,100 school-age children were in school. According to UN and government data, during the 2019-2020 school year, a total of 31,000 school-aged refugee children were living either inside or outside the camps, but only about 13,000 people were registered. The government does not publish registration figures.
Children seeking asylum in Greece are ‘severely discriminated against’ due to persistent delays in opening lessons for children who do not speak Greek, reported the Greek mediator. An education manager from a Greek humanitarian group said: “Every year classes are delayed. In 2019, they started in November. This year it was at the end of January.
The ministry waited until December 15 to announce the hundreds of teaching positions needed for courses in the academic year that began in September, and in some regions had not announced any teaching positions in January. according to to a humanitarian group, Refugee Support Aegean.
Greek regional authorities are responsible for providing transportation between camps and schools, but failed to provide any from many camps on the mainland for months after the start of the school year in 2020-2021 and in previous years , according to the mediator, parents and child protection staff. organizations surveyed.
Barriers to education have been exacerbated for all children in Greece by restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. In-person schooling was halted on March 10, 2020 and partially restarted in mid-May before the summer holidays in June. The 2020-21 school year has taken place delayed for a week, until September 14, high schools only offered distance learning until September 14. February 2021and all schools in the country were closed for most of the period from November 2020 to February 2021.
Children seeking asylum have been disproportionately affected. Even when schools were open to Greek children, children in camps across Greece could not attend, said four agency staff members and two Education Ministry coordinators who work in different camps on the continent.
Farhat, 50, has been living with his family in the Ritsona camp, on the outskirts of Athens, for 17 months, and previously in the Moria camp, on the island of Lesbos, for 7 months. His three school-age children had only been in school in Greece for a month, he said: “For over a year it has been quarantine and confinement, so everything is closed. They don’t go to school, no activities, nothing.
Starting in March 2020, official locked camps in response to a relatively low number of Covid-19 cases, and did not allow schoolchildren to leave. Government decisions regarding Covid-related measures have allowed camp managers to lock down camps, but have not addressed the issue of children’s access to education, which is compulsory until the age of 15 years, education workers said. “Camp officials generally want children to go to school, but local politicians don’t,” and some officials have arbitrarily refused to allow camp children to enroll, an education coordinator said.
Around 480 children in the Malakasa camp were unable to enroll last year because local authorities said there were “not enough classroom places”, the ombudsman reported. Local authorities have refused to let children from the Ritsona camp enroll in nearby schools because “they claim they have no money for heating (the school) or that they would have need more janitors,” said an employee of a humanitarian group. An educational coordinator in the Ritsona camp wrote in a newspaper opinion article, from January to September 2020, approximately 850 children were “waiting for school, as Godot is expected in Beckett’s play.
Shamsiya, 28, said her 8-year-old son waited six months to go to school after they arrived at Oinofyta camp, until he “took a bus to go to the school. They were good teachers, my son didn’t complain, he was happy. But for 10 months, in his forties, he has never gone to school. He was crying when they closed the school for quarantine. He wanted to continue. He learned quickly.
When schools were physically closed, children in the camps had virtually no access to remote learning due to a lack of Wi-Fi and devices, families said. A father of four school-aged children in the Malakasa camps, near Athens, said that when schools closed in March 2020, camp officials “told us the children could study online, but they didn’t never came back to tell us how.”
“There are supposed to be Wi-Fi hotspots in the camps, but none work,” said a refugee education coordinator, based on discussions with coordinators in other camps. The Education Ministry has given some Greek schools and students laptops and tablets for distance learning, but as far as it knows, it “has not given even a single laptop to the refugees,” he said. he declared.
The EU says it has allocated €3.45 billion ($4.12 billion) in funding for “migration management” to Greece since 2015, including educational projects, as well as €625 million to support intercultural schools. Furthermore, in 2020, the EU helped finance an additional amount of euros816 million ($975 million) from the Greek national education budget, including for refugee children. The EU has transferred funding from non-governmental groups and UN agencies directly to the Greek government, but Greece has failed to spend substantial amounts of the EU support it received for the integration of refugees, a coalition of humanitarian groups said. find.
In a positive move, UNICEF and Greece in June agreed on a plan to provide all school-age refugee children with formal and non-formal education over three years, starting with the new school year in September. The plan, based on a proposal by Theirworld, a global education charity, relies on funding of 34 million euros ($40.3 million), or about 1 euro per child per day. The European Commission should give its full support to this plan, Human Rights Watch said.
Some local officials have proposed opening schools in the camps instead of allowing children to attend public schools, which would deprive children of the opportunity to integrate or benefit from regular respite from the harsh conditions of the camps. camps. Greece should welcome children into the national education system, as required by European and Greek laws and in accordance with the principle of the best interests of the child, Human Rights Watch said. The European Commission should reconsider its support for other projects in Greece that could limit children’s access to quality education, such as the construction of new closed camps in remote locations on the islands, the construction concrete walls around the camps, and plans to build walls and fences around 24 additional camps on the continent.
“The future of tens of thousands of children who fled to Europe for safety depends on the decisions made today by Greek and European officials,” Van Esveld said. “The Greek government has repeatedly promised to provide education to all children without discrimination, and its actions before the start of the new school year will serve as a test. »
