showed them my ID from Afghanistan where my birthday is written in Arabic numbers and according to the Afghan calendar. There was no interpreter. They also misspelled my name.43 Sixteen-year-old Hamed P. was registered as 21 years old without being asked any questions about his age. That age was subsequently transferred into his red card identifying him as an asylum seeker. Because he looks underage, he now finds himself blamed by police for the citing the wrong age: “Sometimes when I show my red card to the police they accuse me for not having said the truth that I am underage.”44 Children are often illiterate and not necessarily aware what age they were registered at. Sixteen-year-old Raz G. for example did not know that his deportation order said he was 26 years old.45 Multiple age assessments The registration of a child’s age following his or her entry into the country is not the only time a child may undergo an age assessment. An unaccompanied child who has not filed an asylum application remains without documentation. If arrested a second time, or if the child makes an asylum application, he or she might face another age assessment and may be registered as a different age.46 Sixteen-year-old Najib M. told us how his age was altered during a subsequent arrest: “I was arrested in the port and spent one night in the port police station, then four nights in Athens. On my first paper my age was 16. When I was arrested in Patras they made my age 18 and took the first paper away.”47 Similarly, Sami F. told us, “In 43 Human Rights Watch interview with Sobir S., Volos, June 11, 2008. Human Rights Watch was unable to determine whether the police deliberately did not take the document into consideration or whether it was due to the lack of interpreter and unfamiliarity with the Persian calendar. 44 Human Rights Watch interview with Hamed P., Athens, June 4, 2008. 45 Human Rights Watch interview with Raz G., ferry Lesvos-Piraeus, June 2, 2008 46 EU members also do not enter the date of birth of migrants and asylum seekers into an EU-wide database. Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000 of December 11, 2000 concerning the establishment of 'Eurodac' for the comparison of fingerprints for the effective application of the Dublin Convention, Official Journal L 316 , 15/12/2000 P. 0001 – 0010, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32000R2725:EN:HTML (accessed October 17, 2008), art.8. 47 Human Rights Watch interview with Najib M., Patras, June 8, 2008. Left to Survive 22