arrival in Kos, they were automatically detained, with little evidence of any assessment of their histories of violence. e. Minors and Single Parent Families As discussed in Section 1, both accompanied and alleged unaccompanied minors have historically been detained in the Kos PRDC. However, the facility does not have a play area for children, does not provide specialised facilities or areas for children, has no formal or informal education program, and does not employ any staff who specialise in working with children. From our conversations with clients in the PRDC, families were sometimes, but not always, detained separately from other people in detention. Faiza told us that the two containers she was placed in were shared with unrelated families. Furthermore, she initially shared a room with her sibling and their family, including children, which made a total of six in one room. She further disclosed that this room was poorly suited to the extended family’s needs; the four adults each had one bed each, while the two children had nowhere dedicated to sleep. More concerning, one of the children has a serious medical condition and requires constant care and specialised medical attention. Louis also told us that he shared a container with a married couple; they shared one room in the container, while he and two other single men shared the other. Families are thus not always given significant privacy in the PRDC. Meanwhile, for children detained in the Kos PRDC, the experience is distressing. One of our clients, who was detained along with her three minor children, told us: “Sometimes my children say they wish we were back in the war in Syria rather than being here, in detention”. The three children had all been in an informal school program before the authorities moved them to detention, but they were unable to continue their schooling while in detention because the police routinely failed to set-up their online lessons. Another client, who was detained with his wife and 4 children, informed us that one of his children had epilepsy and that, at one point, the family had run out of medication for one of the children who had epilepsy. f. Shipwreck Survivors Under the IPA, direct relatives of shipwreck victims – i.e. parents and siblings of persons who have deceased during shipwrecks – are considered vulnerable. However, survivors of shipwrecks themselves are not classified as vulnerable groups. This exclusion marks a departure from previous versions of the law, a shift has been widely criticised by human rights actors. When the 2019 IPA was introduced, Human Rights Watch classified the exclusion as among a number of “changes to the asylum procedure that would make it harder to receive a fair evaluation and to appeal negative decisions”.285 In line with these actors,286 we have decided to foreground the trauma experienced by shipwreck survivors, with the intention of highlighting their evident vulnerability – which is ignored in both law and practice. In this report, four participants identified themselves as survivors of shipwrecks. Saeed explained that the boat he had taken from Turkey, which was originally destined for Italy, had sunk in the Aegean, and that the Turkish and Greek coastguard had rescued them and transferred them to the islands. Meanwhile, Afran told us that on his journey to Greece, five people that he knew died when their boat sank. He explained: “We were really shocked when we were rescued…we were nearly dead after the shock…for me and another six people, neither the helicopter nor the rescue boats found us, and we had to swim for nearly six hours to find a rescue boat in order to take us with them. After swimming for six hours, we managed to find a Chinese boat and they took us. And it was the middle of the night as well”. Hana described being beaten by police in Rhodes after being rescued, while, as previously 285 Human Rights Watch, Greece: Asylum Overhaul Threatens Rights (29 October 2019), available at: https://bit.ly/3lzzAWJ. 286 IRC, The Cruelty of Containment (December 2020), available at: https://bit.ly/3avJDWC. 60 DETENTION OF MIGRANTS ON THE ISLAND OF KOS