By Barry Ward (EPP/IE), CoR Alternate Member, Councillor of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County
At the same time that EU national leaders were meeting in Bratislava mid-September, European People’s Party (EPP) local government members met in northern Greece to discuss how the EU should respond to the migration crisis. Part of this conference included a visit to the Diavata Refugee Relocation Camp, outside Thessaloniki, where there was a first-hand opportunity to see some of the conditions migrants arriving in the European Union are facing, and to hear their concerns.
Renovated at the request of the Greek Ministry of the Interior, Diavata is a former military barracks that is being used to accommodate migrants who have arrived on some of Greece’s many islands. It opened its doors on the 24th of February this year and is now home to about 1,000 men, women and children, mostly from Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. The camp comprises approximately of 200 shelters and is intended to cater primarily for families, so there are roughly as many women as men, but almost half the residents are children. There are also about 30 unaccompanied minors living in Diavata – young people who have tragically lost their parents in one way or another on their perilous journey to Europe.
The number of children is immediately obvious when you arrive in Diavata; they come in their droves, from the very young to teenagers, interested in new visitors, and surprisingly engaged, despite the fact that Diavata has no official school for them. The average age in Diavata is under 20 years old and the fact that the people miss their home countries is obvious to see: children’s graffiti with the words “I miss you Syria” in English and Arabic, murals shouting “Save Aleppo”, and residents holding up signs asking why the Afghan people have been “forgeten”.
The plight of these people is obvious and the conditions in which they are surviving every day are undoubtedly substandard. Diavata, which is served by the UNHCR and other charities, is one of the more ordered camps, having relocated migrants from the islands to a renovated, mainland site.
But you can’t help getting the feeling that the Greeks are doing their best in an impossible situation. It is now estimated that 11 million people have been displaced from their homes by the conflict in Syria alone, and Greece is one of the first points of entry into the European Union for many migrants.