results in a person’s RIS file. At the same time, RIS does not automatically submit copies of a person’s RIS file to the police, meaning that, for the police to have the file, either the individual or her lawyer must submit it directly to the police. This in practice is extraordinarily difficult to do without a lawyer. First, most people are not aware that their files are divided among the different authorities and that they are responsible for ensuring that the police have access to all of their files. However, even if they were aware of this, they would still face significant hurdles to actually access their RIS files. People cannot request electronic copies of RIS files; they must take a hard copy in person. However, because people are detained automatically upon arrival and the RIS offices are outside of the PRDC, they have no way to leave the PRDC to physically take their file and submit it to the police. Practically speaking, the only way that a detained person can submit her RIS file to the police is through a lawyer. As such, even if RIS identifies a person as vulnerable, both the police and the applicant often remain unaware because the assessments are issued after the applicants are already in detention and RIS does not hand over the files to the police. In the past ten months, Equal Rights has come across two cases of people who were identified by RIS as Type A vulnerable and detained for prolonged periods of time, while the police were unaware of their vulnerabilities. In both of those cases, a lawyer from Equal Rights discovered that they were vulnerable after requesting their RIS files for a separate reason. After seeing that the clients were vulnerable, the lawyer submitted the RIS file to the police who, in both cases, released the clients within days based on their vulnerabilities. In both cases the clients were survivors of gender-based violence, and in one case the client suffered from myriad physical and mental health conditions and had struggled to get proper medical treatment in the PRDC. In the latter case, the client spent nearly 8 months in detention, even though she had been identified by RIS as vulnerable early on in her procedure. Further, in these cases the detention orders did not contain any individualised assessment based on their vulnerabilities, because the authorities had no knowledge that they were vulnerable in the first place. Accordingly, they also did not receive any special medical or psycho-social treatment, as required by EU and Greek law. ii. Persons Not Recognized as Vulnerable by the Greek Authorities More commonly though, vulnerable persons are never recognized by the Greek authorities as vulnerable in the first place. For years, observers have documented the many flaws in the age assessment procedure for unaccompanied minors,137 however these flaws extend also to vulnerability assessments for other groups of people as well. This report does not go in-depth into the many problems with the vulnerability procedures on Kos, yet it is worth noting that most of our clients have indicated some vulnerability or special need but have not had access to a proper vulnerability assessment procedure. This is particularly true for survivors of torture. Under Article 72(1) the authorities can refer a person for medical or psycho-social exams when they suspect that the person may have suffered from serious harm. These exams should be conducted by specialized personnel and free of charge.138 However, currently there are no public authorities that specialize in identifying or treating torture survivors139 and there is only one NGO, METAdrasi, that conducts torture assessments in line with the Istanbul Protocol.140 The METAdrasi unit is based in Athens and has not had a mission to Kos since Equal Rights opened its office. In other words, asylum seekers on Kos have no access to either a public or private authority that can conduct torture assessments. 137 138 139 140 See e.g., Human Rights Watch, Greece: Lone Migrant Children Left Unprotected (19 July 2017), available at: https://bit.ly/2YTEFRc. Art. 72(1) L. 4636/2019. AIDA, Country Report: Greece (June 2021), 121, available at: https://bit.ly/3mMob7c. METAdrasi, Hope and Memory: Identification and Certification of Victims of Torture, available at: https://bit.ly/3jTd2PR. 19 DETENTION OF MIGRANTS ON THE ISLAND OF KOS