This Report is based on findings that were collected by GCR’s team when carrying out a mission
to the island of Kos in May 2016, information gathered during meetings with available
representatives of island authorities and local organizations that are active on the island or had
recently began their work there, as well as official statistics, essays and reports from national
organizations, press releases, articles in local, national and international press, information found
online, and GCR’s reports from previous missions.
We would sincerely like to thank everyone who contributed to this Report by giving their time
and providing invaluable information.
Introduction
On May 9th-11th 2016, GCR conducted a mission to Kos, in which a lawyer, a social worker and
two translators in Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Arabic and French participated. GCR’s previous
mission to the island of Kos had been carried out in the summer of 2015, and specifically during
the period when the flow of newly arriving refugees had significantly increased and the state
mechanisms were proving to be entirely incapable of handling and managing the situation. The
local community was called on to fill this enormous gap, which, with extremely limited
resources proved immediately responsive and made great efforts to meet the needs that had been
created. Since then, the situation has changed drastically, since facts regarding adopted practices
and general management consistently shifted throughout the entire course of the previous year,
culminating in the recent startling changes that were brought about by the conclusion of the EUTurkey Agreement of March 20th, 2016. The Agreement, highly criticized on an international
scale as ignoring the basic human rights of newcomers, brought about the enormous decline in
arrivals nationwide (and the inevitable increase of flows to Europe through alternative and more
dangerous routes). The decline in arrivals to Kos is startling. Based on information provided to
by the Head of Civilian Protection in the Kos Municipality, the arrivals in the recent months
were as follows: In December 2015, 3,844 people arrived to Kos, in January 2016 2,103, in
February 1,237, the first two weeks of March 259, the last two weeks of the same month 164,
while throughout April, the sum of all new arrivals did not surpass 98 people. In fact, as the
Police Chief of the Second Police Department of Dodecanese clarified, total arrivals since 20/3 the date the Agreement came into force - to 9/05 amounted to 243 people. From then on and as
of the moment this report was being written, a sporadic and always limited number of new
arrivals were noted on the island. The failure to ensure the human rights of even such a small
number of people arriving to the island is impressive, as the State continues to be surprisingly
absent and problems remain significant, as we will strive to document below.
It is noted here that in the context of GCR’s mission to the island, several meetings occurred with
authority representatives, notably the Police Chief of the Second Police Department of
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