Greece’s Forgotten Teenagers

There are an estimated 2,300 unaccompanied migrant children in Greece, most of whom arrived from Syria and Afghanistan via Turkey. Like the thousands of other migrants there they had no intention of staying but saw Greece as a stopping off point en-route to the rest of Europe. But all that changed in March 2016 when Greece closed its borders following a deal struck between the EU and Turkey. It meant that Greece and other EU countries could return migrants to Turkey whose asylum claims were rejected. But almost a year on critics say the plan is not working and that many migrants now find themselves in limbo and living in miserable conditions. Phil Kemp heads to Greece in search of the teenagers living by their wits in the desolate and ill equipped refugee camps and on the streets of Athens.

(Photo: Refugee camp in Greece, Copyright: BBC)