A History of Protection Failure Unaccompanied migrant and refugee children coming to Greece is not a new phenomenon. Especially with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the crisis that ensued in Albania in the 1990s, Greece has for over a decade been faced with the challenge of having hundreds of unaccompanied children from third countries on its territory. The presence of Albanian children, often unaccompanied and from Albania’s Roma ethnic minority, manifested itself visibly in the early 1990s. Many of these children were living on the streets—begging, washing car windows at traffic lights, selling minor items, or engaging in petty criminality. Many were believed to have been trafficked and some reportedly ended up being sexually exploited. As now, the total number of foreign children in Greece was not known and the government did not keep track of them. A UNICEF sponsored study in 2000 estimated that there were about 5,800 street children in the country, a majority Albanian, but more than 14 percent were estimated to be from Iraq, Pakistan, and of Kurdish origin.11 The government of Greece reacted to the presence of these children with a law and order approach, euphemistically entitled “Protection and Social Care for Street Children,” under which children were arrested and some were charged with begging, a criminal offense.12 Following arrest, children were taken to large-scale care institutions, one of them the Aghia Varvara center in Athens, or were deported, sometimes to be re-trafficked.13 Approximately 500 children who had been arrested by the police and taken to the “Aghia Varvara” care center between 1998 and 2002 went missing from the 11 UNICEF, “Street Children in Greece: Research conducted by ALKO on behalf of UNICEF,” November 2000, http://www.unicef.gr/reports/alko/street.php (accessed August 18, 2008). 12 Greek Ombudsman, “Conclusions: Implementation of the Program ‘Protection and Social Care for Street Children,’” March 2004, http://www.synigoros.gr/reports/ag_varvara.pdf (accessed August 18, 2008). 13 Committee on the Rights of the Child, “Summary Record of the 754th Meeting, Consideration of Reports by States parties, Initial report of Greece (continued),” CRC/C/SR.754, September 13, 2002, para. 48. Greek Ombudsman, “Conclusions: Implementation of the Program ‘Protection and Social Care for Street Children,’” March 2004, pp. 18-19; Terre des hommes, “The Trafficking of Albanian Children in Greece,” January 2003, http://www.tdh.ch/website/doc_dnld.nsf/bf25ab0f47ba5dd785256499006b15a4/aa38138679a23d33c12571760041dd5d/$FI LE/albania_childtrafficking_03_eng.pdf (accessed August 18, 2008), p. 29. 13 Human Rights Watch December 2008