The law also provides that, when a woman is being interviewed, the interviewer, as well as the interpreter, should also be female where this has been expressly requested by the applicant. 723 On this note, it is important to recall recommendations made to Greece by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which, in its February 2024 Concluding observations on the combined eighth and ninth periodic reports of Greece, inter alia, noted the need to “[e]nsure the application of a gender-sensitive approach in receiving refugee and asylum-seeking women and in considering asylum claims, including by training immigration officers on gender-sensitive interviewing techniques, and that gender-based violence against women is recognized as a protection ground”.724 In practice, GCR is aware of cases where the vulnerability or particular circumstances of the applicant have not been taken into account or have not properly been assessed at first or/and second instance. According to GCR’s observations, inadequate interview conditions continued to be reported in the premises of RAO and AAUs in 2024, as interpretation was a challenge. Notably, registrations and interviews were conducted without consideration of potential vulnerabilities and relevant needs. Certain interviews and registrations took place simultaneously in different spaces within the same container, which does not provide proper sound insulation and is not in line with the principle of confidentiality. Given that, for the most of 2024, there was a significant gap in the provision of interpretation services with RICs/ CACCs/ CAFTAAS and RAOs, vulnerability assessment was in practice unfeasible. The Appeals Committees further contribute to the non-implementation of special procedural guarantees through a strict interpretation of Article 72 Asylum Code. Several Committees have ruled that the onus is on the asylum applicant to establish exactly what evidence they would have been able to submit in their specific case if procedural guarantees had been provided during the procedure. 725 According to a decision of the 10th Committee of the Appeals Authority dated 13 November 2023 regarding the second instance examination of the asylum case of a vulnerable person from Siera Leone, the vulnerability of the applicant “was not assessed, since on the day of his registration he was subjected to an extremely superficial, non-thorough and faulty medical examination […] Therefore […] at the time of his oral interview, the procedures of first reception had not even been initiated, let alone completed, and specifically his assessment as vulnerable by the competent EODY psychosocial unit. Thus, an essential type (of the procedure) was violated, as the assessment and recognition of vulnerability constitutes a special procedural guarantee in favor of the asylum seeker and a special procedural obligation of the Administration, the violation of which affects the validity of the examination of the application for international protection, making it ineffective and non-specialized […] In view of these, the Committee judges necessary to postpone the issuance of its final judgment so that the applicant can undergo at his own initiative medical examinations and present medical certificates on his state of health during the new scheduled discussion of the case […]”.-726 All decisions rejecting minors' claims have troubling similarities. Procedural deficits (absence of a guardian, of appropriate legal representation and legal aid during the process), as well as substantial deficits regarding the determination of refugee status (lack of any reference to the Best Interest of the Child or lack of assessment thereof, obvious lack of knowledge regarding forms of child persecution in general and in countries of origin in particular or the lack of a proper assessment of a minor's credibility), make it almost impossible for unaccompanied minors undergoing the procedure themselves to qualify for international protection. The number of decisions granting refugee status or subsidiary protection to unaccompanied children and the number of in-merit rejection decisions issued throughout 2024 is not available. What is available is only the number of 1 s instance decisions granting refugee status and subsidiary protection to UAMs, which amounted to a total of 986 in the 11 months of 2024 (968 decisions granting refugee status & 18 decisions granting subsidiary protection). 727 723 724 725 726 727 Article 82(5) Asylum Code, as well as Administrative Court of Appeal of Athens, Decision 3043/2018, in Farmakidis-Markou Konstantinos, Refugee Law, Nomiki Bibliothiki, 2021, in greek, in which the court found that an applicant who has not requested an interpreter of the same gender for the interview cannot rely on this provision at a later stage. CEDAW, Concluding observations on the combined eighth and ninth periodic reports of Greece, February 2024, available at: https://tinyurl.com/3f8yvh9v, para. 44 (c). 6th Appeals Committee, Decision 30955/2020, 18 May 2021, para II.4; 12 th Appeals Committee, Decision 233902/2021, 9 September 2021, p. 3. Decision IP/268799/2023/13.11.2023 of the 10th Committee of the Appeals Authority on a case legally supported in 2nd instance by the Registry of Lawyers of the Asylum Service in GCR/HIAS/RSA, Δελτίο Νομολογίας Ασύλου 2/2203, December 2023, pp. 25-26, available in Greek at: https://bit.ly/3JuO7y7. MoMA, Information Note A, November 2024, Reception, Asylum & Integration Procedures, p. 14, available here, table 11f. 145