20 they are nonetheless responsible for doing so who are detained on Kos are done so under the under Greek and EU law more broadly. Both pretence that they are adults, meaning that the Return Directive and Law 3907/2011 create that they are detained alongside adults and do special guarantees for minors, particularly not have access to the rights afforded to unaccompanied ones. Those protections detained minors, such as appropriate include “the possibility to engage in leisure recreational facilities and education.53 They activities […] access to education,”49 the right also risk losing the special procedural to be accommodated in a facility that accounts guarantees afforded to minors during the for children’s needs, and the right to have the asylum procedure and, in particular, their right best interest of the child considered in the to family reunification. For example, in one context of their removal proceedings. These case that Equal Rights represented the minor rights exist because children are a particularly had an aunt in Austria with whom he was vulnerable group, and so from the moment the eligible to reunite. Once he was released and police suspect a person of being a minor they properly assessed as a minor, Equal Rights was must proceed to determine what rights he is able to successfully represent him in his family entitled to. In other words, the police must reunification procedure. However, he was conduct themselves or refer suspected minors ineligible to apply for family reunification to an age assessment procedure, which the while he was registered as an adult, and, had police on Kos consistently fail to do. Lawyers he remained in detention even a few weeks on Kos did eventually establish a method for longer, he would have missed the three-month activating the age assessment procedure in filing deadline provided by the Dublin III such cases through the central RIS authority. In Regulation for family reunification three cases represented by Equal Rights, the applications.54 50 51 procedure led to the release of three 16- and 17year-old boys, all of whom were later transferred to a shelter on the mainland. Establishing this procedure took several months though, resulting in the prolonged detention of numerous children on Kos in dangerous and inhumane conditions in the meantime. C. Updates Regarding Conditions This section provides updates regarding the living conditions for asylum seekers in the Kos PRDC, highlighting trends, similarities, and differences in the living conditions since the November 2021 report. The findings in this The detention of minors has major legal and section are based on the testimonies of 10 humanitarian consequences. Research shows individuals provided during targeted that detention has an enormous impact on a interviews conducted between June and child’s physical and mental health. 52 Children November 2022. As families and women are no Art. 17(3) Directive 2008/115/EC; Art. 32(3) L. 3907/2011. 50 Art. 17(4) Directive 2008/115/EC; Art. 32(4) L. 3907/2011. 51 Art. 17(5) Directive 2008/115/EC; Art. 32(5) L. 3907/2011. 49 Human Rights Watch, Children Behind Bars: the Global Overuse of Detention of Children (2016), available at: https://bit.ly/3i8lr4a. 53 Art. 17(3) Directive 2008/115/EC; Art. 32(3) L. 3907/2011. 54 Art. 21(1) Regulation (EU) 604/2013. 52 ‘Still detained and forgotten’ – Update on Detention Policies, Practices, and Conditions on Kos 2022/23