Protection in a Hostile Environment: An on-the-ground study into protection practices in Lesvos and Athens, AdMiGov DELIVERABLE 4.1

This report covers continuities and discontinuities in the provision of protection on Lesvos and Athens with a specific focus on access to legal protection, healthcare and accommodation. Continuities discussed include the incorporation of protection practices in border control and wider migration governance. Meanwhile discontinuities include increasing levels of control and the systematic move towards carceral policies and practices in the governing of displaced populations in need of protection. The report details the current, active implementation of harmful policies. 

However what the report also finds is that despite a number of continued attempts to ‘offshore’ the management of arrivals and asylum to the Aegean Islands since 2016, effective separation is impossible. In this report we show how in practice ‘offshore’ and ‘onshore’ spaces exist in mutually dependent relationships. This relationship is due to weaknesses in the protection regime that require the use of the mainland or the ‘onshore’ as an ‘overspill’ or pressure release space and vice versa when the protection regime is unable to address specific challenges in situ, such as overcrowding.

Alongside this the report focuses on the increasing hostility — legal, political and physical — directed towards humanitarians and civil society actors. This results in an increasingly precarious and dangerous operating environment and requires these actors to defend a system they consider already inadequate in order to prevent a further deterioration in on-the-ground conditions for displaced people in Greece. In addition we faced a number of hurdles in accessing and compiling accurate data necessary for understanding the intricacies of protection as it is actually practiced and experienced. These hurdles are also faced by humanitarians and civil society organisations.

Our report compels us to make a number of recommendations. The first of these relates to gaps, replications and an often times general confusion in the existing data. As accurate data is a fundamental component in the provision of protection we suggest the quality of data, its collection and publication can be improved overall. More specifically this means the standardization of data relating to displaced peoples’ access to services including legal protection, healthcare and accommodation; the disaggregation of data facilitating accurate reporting and responses to particular protection needs in particular localities; and the publication of data in a systematic and timely manner. 

Alongside problems around data, we also note repeated failures to adequately monitor the provision of protection. This includes both a failure for responsible actors at the European Union and member state (Greek) level to consider this necessary in the first instance and subsequent failures in monitoring and accountability. Our second recommendation therefore involves the establishment of a robust monitoring system with the will and power to act on failures.

Our third recommendation relates to accessing services. In our research we evidence a number of serious gaps that emerge in peoples ability to claim their rights to asylum but importantly how this ability is also tied to being able to access other services such as healthcare and accommodation. Access to these services forms a fundamental part of being able to live in dignity and to recover from physical and psychological harm. We therefore recommend that this relational access to services is recognised, safeguarded and increased overall.

Our fourth recommendation relates to the overall operational environment in which protection is currently being practiced. The protection regime, even with its existing weakness and failures is under threat from political actors determined to undermine fundamental human rights such as the right to asylum as well as access to humanitarian protection. Alongside this these political actors are making the work of humanitarian practitioners and civil society groups more difficult and dangerous. This is undoubtedly a disappointing development in the European Union with its commitment to freedom, security and justice and its aims to contribute to solidarity, mutual respect amongst peoples and protection of human rights. We therefore recommend that access to asylum for all is defended, that humanitarian access and ability to operate is facilitated and civil society organisations given the freedom to operate.

Finally to guide readers from different constituencies we would like to offer the following reading guide to help in navigating the report. We encourage all readers to familiarise themselves with our understanding of protection, our methodology, and research design laid out in Part 1. Those readers who are already familiar with the recent history of protection concerns in the Greek context may wish to skip Part 2, however we would encourage a reading of this as it contains Greek language documentation not often discussed in English. For those readers who would like to jump straight to the detailed discussion of our findings we suggest moving straight to Part 3.