families, have access to their mobile phones, access to doctor and interpreter, and can challenge their detention.2 Since the WGAD’s visit to Greece, three UN treaty bodies have issued specific recommendations to Greece, namely the Committee against Torture (CAT) in 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 2016, and the Human Rights Committee (HRC) in 2015. The CAT recommended that Greece refrain from detaining asylum seekers and irregular migrants for prolonged periods, use detention as a measure of last resort and for the shortest period possible and continue the application of non-custodial measures, ensure that immigration detainees have access to counsel; guarantee judicial review to challenge the legality of detention; ensure adequate living conditions in all immigration centres; ensure adequate medical and mental health care to detainees; establish an effective and independent oversight mechanism giving possibility to detainees to bring complaints; ensure that all allegations of torture and ill-treatment by law-enforcement officials are promptly, thoroughly, and impartially investigated by the authorities, that the perpetrators are prosecuted, and if found guilty, punished and that victims are provided with redress. The Committee also urged Greece to ensure that children are not detained solely because of their immigration status and cease detaining migrants and asylum seekers, especially unaccompanied children, in police holding cells (§ 21 and 23).3 The CERD urged Greece to eliminate the automatic detention of migrants arriving on the islands after the conclusion of the statement by the European Union and Turkey on migration, introduce alternatives to detention, ensure that those deprived of their liberty enjoy due process and take measures to convert the reception and identification centres on the islands into open centres (§ 23).4 The HRC called upon Greece to ensure that detention of all irregular migrants is necessary and proportionate and for the shortest possible period of time, and that alternatives to detention are available in law and implemented in practice. The Committee also recommended ensuring decent living conditions in detention centres, by providing adequate health care services, food, and sanitary conditions (§ 28).5 Despite the intense and ongoing international attention that Greece has received since the WGAD’s visit in 2013, it is widely documented that the issues the WGAD and other human rights bodies have addressed during these years with regards to immigration detention remain relevant today. At the same time, new issues have emerged, including as a result of the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement (commonly referred to as the “EU-Turkey deal”) and the closure of the so-called Balkan corridor in 2016, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants on his Mission to Greece, A/HRC/35/25/Add.2,” 24 April 2017, http//www.ohchr.orgEN/Issues/Migration/SRMigrants/Pages/CountryVisits.aspx 2 UN Committee against Torture (CAT), "Concluding Observations on the Seventh Periodic Report of Greece, CAT/C/GRC/CO/7,” 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/ENACARegion/Pages/GRIndex.aspx 3 UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), “Concluding Observations on the Twentieth to Twenty-Second Periodic Reports of Greece, CERD/C/GRC/CO/20-22,” 3 October 2016, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/ENACARegion/Pages/GRIndex.aspx 4 UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), “Concluding Observations on the Second Periodic Report of Greece, CCPR/C/GRC/CO/2,” 3 December 2015, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/ENACARegion/Pages/GRIndex.aspx 5 GDP & GCR 2019 4