under squalid conditions in different regions of Greece had protested also earlier in February, March and April against their desperate situation of being trapped in limbo. No detection of vulnerable persons, no support, no protection M.S. (aged 24) is a single mother from Afghanistan. She is desperate to find help and protection after all: “I was sold as a child to a man whom I had to marry. I was illtreated repeatedly. I have been in Greece for 1.5 months. I am in a camp far from the city. I tried to ask for help, but no one listened. The other day I took my children and I went to the highway looking for a passing car to put an end to my misery.” Hundreds of highly vulnerable persons have arrived to Greece within the last months. Among them are many who are in need of immediate medical treatment: some require emergency hospital care and many others need other forms of special care and protection. In the majority of cases, the refugees arriving in Greece come from war-torn and conflict areas5. There are many people who were injured in the war, leaving them disabled or with severe physical and mental health problems. Additionally, according to UNHCR a very high percentage of the people arriving are women and children, and many of the women are pregnant. Furthermore, Greece has no special accommodation facilities for vulnerable persons other than unaccompanied children and specifically lone children under the age of 12. There is no special accommodation for disabled people, victims of torture or other forms of exploitation or violence, or persons suffering severe diseases or psychological problems.6 Despite the scale of the humanitarian crisis, with huge numbers of refugees trapped in Greece, there are currently still only 523 places for vulnerable persons and asylum seekers in open reception centres in the entire country, and another 477 places specifically for unaccompanied minors. The result is that most vulnerable refugees are forced to stay in emergency reception sites, which, according to a new law, could be turned into closed detention camps at any time. As the number of people trapped in Greece rose rapidly with the closure of the border, what little support for vulnerable refugees there is – better accommodation, social care or medical and mental aid – is reaching only a very small number of persons. For this reason, and the fact that provisions for vulnerable persons have neither improved nor significantly increased (the only exception is a slight rise in accommodation places for unaccompanied minors), vulnerability of refugees is now measured by an individual’s closeness to death. Priority is given to persons participating in the relocation programme and, within that group, the most vulnerable. The First Reception Service (Law 3907/11)7 – now renamed the Reception and                                                                                                                 5 The majority of people come from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. According to UNHCR 90% of arrivals have departed from the world’s top 10 refugee-producing countries. Source: http://data.unhcr.org/mediterranean/country.php?id=83 (visited May 5) 6 Email by Christos Dimopoulos, former Co-ordinator of Service for the Management of Accommodation Requests for asylum seekers and unaccompanied children (EKKA), March 23, 2016. 7 Law 3907/2011 as modified by Law 4375/2016, which will come into force in parts on April 20, 2016 and in parts two months after the publication.   4